Police say Dallas sniper plotted bigger assault, as more protesters arrested

The U.S. military veteran who fatally shot five Dallas police officers last week was plotting a larger assault, authorities said, disclosing how he had taunted negotiators and written on a wall in his own blood before being killed.

Protests against U.S. police tactics continued for a third straight day on Sunday, with scores arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after authorities warned that violence during street demonstrations over the fatal police shootings of two black men last week would not be tolerated.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown told CNN on Sunday Micah X. Johnson had improvised as he used "shoot-and-move" tactics to gun down officers during a demonstration on Thursday, the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001.

Brown said a search of Johnson's home showed the gunman had practiced using explosives, and that other evidence suggested he wanted to use them against law enforcement officers.

"We're convinced that this suspect had other plans," he said. The fatal police shootings of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana last week led the 25-year-old Texas shooter to "fast-track" his attack, Brown said.

Johnson, a black veteran who served in Afghanistan, took advantage of a spontaneous march that began toward the end of the protest over those killings. Moving ahead of the rally in a black Tahoe SUV, he stopped when he saw a chance to use "high ground" to target police, Brown said.

Johnson was killed by a bomb-equipped robot but Brown said before then he sang, laughed at and taunted officers, and said he wanted to "kill white people" in retribution for police killings of black people. "He seemed very much in control and very determined to hurt other officers," the police chief said

[Reuters]