Dallas gunman wrote about tactics he used during attack

DALLAS — The gunman who killed five police officers here studied the “shoot-and-move” combat tactic that he apparently used, writing about it extensively in a journal that detectives are poring over, a senior local official said Saturday.

Investigators found the “fairly voluminous” journal in the home of Micah Xavier Johnson, the sniper who shot at officers in downtown Dallas on Thursday night, said Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive.

The journal described “what we call ‘shoot and move’ tactics — ways to fire on a target and then move quickly and get into position at another location to inflict more damage on targets without them being able to ascertain where the shots are coming from,” Jenkins said.

Neighbors have told investigators that Johnson, a 25-year-old Army Reserve veteran who served in Afghanistan, had an interest in weapons, and officials have said that a cache of arms, ammunition, bomb-making material and body armor were found in his home in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb.

The journal “shows that he’s well prepared,” said Jenkins, who as county judge is both the county’s top executive and its director of homeland security and emergency management.

During the attack, which left five officers dead, and seven officers and two civilians wounded, he used a semiautomatic SKS rifle — an old Soviet design — and a high-capacity handgun.

A large part of downtown Dallas remained closed Saturday as investigators began a second day of piecing together the details of the attack, an investigation that has included more than 200 interviews.

Two squad cars outside police headquarters have become memorials, covered in flowers, balloons, posters and handwritten notes.

Thompson, who worked for the regional transit system’s police department, is the only officer killed in the attack who has been publicly identified by authorities.

“We’re all human here, and I think that people feel each other’s pain,” Mayor Mike Rawlings told reporters Saturday as he visited police headquarters.

After the assault, which came amid a peaceful protest about police shootings, law enforcement officials had a protracted standoff with Johnson before killing him with a robot-delivered explosive device.

In a memorandum to top city officials, Eric Campbell, the assistant city manager, said “portions of the crime scene locations in the downtown area will remain closed to the public until Wednesday.”