Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation
Standoff is award-winning journalist Jamie Thompson’s gripping account of a deadly night in Dallas, told through the eyes of those at the center of the events, who offer a nuanced look at race and policing in America.
On the evening of July 7, 2016, protesters gathered in cities across the nation after police shot two Black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. As officers patrolled a march in Dallas, a young man stepped out of an SUV wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a high-powered rifle. He killed five officers and wounded eleven others.
It fell to a small group of cops to corner the shooter inside a community college, where a fierce gun battle was followed by a stalemate. The crisis negotiator Larry Gordon, a twenty-one-year department veteran, spent hours bonding with the gunman—over childhood ghosts and death and shared experiences of racial injustice in America—while his colleagues devised an unprecedented plan to bring the night to its dramatic end.
Thompson’s minute-by-minute account includes intimate portrayals of the negotiator, a surgeon who operated on the fallen officers, a mother of four shot down in the street, and the SWAT officers tasked with stopping the gunman. This is a deeply affecting story of real people navigating a terrifying crisis and a city’s attempts to heal its divisions.
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Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation
Standoff is award-winning journalist Jamie Thompson’s gripping account of a deadly night in Dallas, told through the eyes of those at the center of the events, who offer a nuanced look at race and policing in America.
On the evening of July 7, 2016, protesters gathered in cities across the nation after police shot two Black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. As officers patrolled a march in Dallas, a young man stepped out of an SUV wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a high-powered rifle. He killed five officers and wounded eleven others.
It fell to a small group of cops to corner the shooter inside a community college, where a fierce gun battle was followed by a stalemate. The crisis negotiator Larry Gordon, a twenty-one-year department veteran, spent hours bonding with the gunman—over childhood ghosts and death and shared experiences of racial injustice in America—while his colleagues devised an unprecedented plan to bring the night to its dramatic end.
Thompson’s minute-by-minute account includes intimate portrayals of the negotiator, a surgeon who operated on the fallen officers, a mother of four shot down in the street, and the SWAT officers tasked with stopping the gunman. This is a deeply affecting story of real people navigating a terrifying crisis and a city’s attempts to heal its divisions.
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Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation
Standoff is award-winning journalist Jamie Thompson’s gripping account of a deadly night in Dallas, told through the eyes of those at the center of the events, who offer a nuanced look at race and policing in America.
On the evening of July 7, 2016, protesters gathered in cities across the nation after police shot two Black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. As officers patrolled a march in Dallas, a young man stepped out of an SUV wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a high-powered rifle. He killed five officers and wounded eleven others.
It fell to a small group of cops to corner the shooter inside a community college, where a fierce gun battle was followed by a stalemate. The crisis negotiator Larry Gordon, a twenty-one-year department veteran, spent hours bonding with the gunman—over childhood ghosts and death and shared experiences of racial injustice in America—while his colleagues devised an unprecedented plan to bring the night to its dramatic end.
Thompson’s minute-by-minute account includes intimate portrayals of the negotiator, a surgeon who operated on the fallen officers, a mother of four shot down in the street, and the SWAT officers tasked with stopping the gunman. This is a deeply affecting story of real people navigating a terrifying crisis and a city’s attempts to heal its divisions.
Jamie Thompson covered the Dallas police shooting for the Washington Post. Her later account of that night for the Dallas Morning News won an Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing. She has been a contributing editor for D Magazine and an associate professor of journalism at the University of Dallas. Her work also has appeared in Texas Monthly and the Tampa Bay Times.
Table of Contents
A Note to the Reader Prologue 1. The Negotiator 2. The Police Chief 3. The Protester 4. Dallas SWAT 5. The Trauma Surgeon 6. Wonder Woman 7. Hotspot Duty 8. The Foxtrots 9. The Protest 10. Ambush 11. The Offensive 12. Code 100 13. The Firefight 14. Baylor Hospital 15. Target Identification 16. White Boy Wayne 17. Code Yellow 18. Words or Weapons 19. The Mayor 20. The Master Breacher 21. “Kill ’Em All” 22. Seeing Ghosts 23. The Wives 24. Mind-set 25. Preparations 26. The Gullah Wars 27. Calculations 28. Tying In 29. The Thin Blue Line 30. The Toll Rises 31. Backup 32. The Mother 33. Ready, Ready, Now 34. After 35. Daybreak 36. The Press Conference 37. The Memorial 38. X 39. The Long Night 40. Breathe 41. Loss 42. Beginnings 43. Unease 44. The Bunker Barn 45. Call It Out 46. The Prairie Source Notes Acknowledgments Index