Ambush is the coward’s tool: Only in bloodlust fiction and declared war does surprise assassination run the chance of improving a situation. But on Thursday night in Dallas, ambush was the way to start a skirmish or settle a score.

Before America’s computer and television screens came alive with news of the slaughter, the evening had been peaceful. Dallas police officers had tweeted photos of themselves alongside demonstrators marching to protest the police shooting deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Then came hails of gunfire from overhead. A dozen officers and two civilians down. This wasn’t justified revenge, it was incoherent paradox. Dallas hasn’t been the site of a police shooting that drew national attention. “Our police,” a mournful Dallas woman told a TV reporter, “had done nothing.”

We don’t pretend to know the whole plot line. What’s certain is that the sniper fire managed mostly to aggravate an already tense national divide.

There is truth in the protesters’ complaint that Americans were slow to realize that some shootings by police have been blatantly unjustified. That’s a systemic problem that has to be addressed. Chicago is one of many cities grappling with how to identify, punish and prevent those crimes.

The officers who in recent days shot the Louisiana and Minnesota men now will answer to the criminal justice system. That’s how Americans establish accountability, isolate the criminals, exonerate the innocents. Sneak attacks aren’t part of civil society’s retribution equation.

There is truth, too, in the police response that violent killers terrorize and decimate communities where not all law-abiding citizens divulge what they know about gangs and guns. The majority of us don’t engage with the criminals or their victims. We dispatch cops to do the dirty work of curbing that violence.

So we were struck by a Friday morning comment from Dallas police Chief David Brown. In what had to be an emotional moment, he didn’t resort to blame or vilification. “This must stop -- this divisiveness between our police and our citizens,” Brown said. “We don’t feel much support most days. Let’s not make today most days. Please, we need your support to be able to protect you from men like these, who carried out this tragic, tragic event.”

Nothing -- no event somewhere else, no spontaneous anger, no grudge -- justifies what occurred Thursday night on the streets of a major U.S. city.

The danger for the rest of us is that we succumb to easy temptation and generalize from this -- about cops or protesters, about the justice system, about this group or some other. That we let loud voices exploit any violence.

The taking of innocent life is an outrage, no matter who pulls the trigger. The nation now will watch as Dallas grieves, administers justice and struggles to recover. And the rest of us? What happened Thursday night should make each of us think more about what we can heal, and less about which people we can accuse.

(Tribune Content Agency/Chicago Tribune)
Editorial