After the targeted police shooting that killed five officers dead and left eleven people wounded in Dallas three weeks ago, Dallas Police Chief David Brown told protesters there was only one way to change things from the inside: “get off that protest line and put an application in.”
It looks like the strategy has paid off.
The Dallas Police Department reports it has seen an unprecedented surge in applications since the July 7th shooting (up 344%), according to statistics posted on its Facebook page.
Addressing Black Lives Matter protesters who had demonstrated against police racial bias, David Brown bluntly urged them to become part of the solution by joining the police force during a press conference four days after the event.
“Serve your communities. Don’t be part of the problem” he said ” We’re hiring. […]. We’ll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.”
Brown, a 32 year veteran of policing, also lamented the tremendous burden placed on the shoulders of law enforcement to solve society’s every failure during his speech..
“We’re asking cops to do too much in this country” he said.
Between June 8th and June 20th, the department received an average of 11 applications per day. In the two weeks following the tragic shooting, that number spiked to nearly 40.
The Dallas ambush was the deadliest for law enforcement since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
