Before this week, violence had already taken from him a former partner, a brother, a son. At the time, in June 2010, Brown was only seven weeks into his new position as chief and again spoke of heartache, this time in a statement to his own officers. Few people understand loss better than David Brown, the Dallas police chief who stood before television cameras Friday morning and said, “We are heartbroken.”Even before five police officers were killed during a Black Lives Matter protest Thursday and seven other people wounded, Brown had become intimate with loss, pummelled by it, again and again, in his career and personal life. When Brown was named police chief in 2010, he entered the position with a reputation of being an intense and introspective leader, according to a Dallas Morning News profile, that quoted him as telling a friend, “You know, I’m a loner, man.” But if he was a quiet force, his personal pain was very public — and would become even more so after his son who bore his name killed a police officer and another man before being fatally shot more than a dozen times.

Source: thestar July 08, 2016 17:15 UTC