Dallas Police Used a Robot to Blow Up Suspected Shooter: Here’s What We’re Reading Today

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Here’s what we’re reading:

1. What we know about the Dallas shootings

Five officers were killed and 7 others were wounded

“The eruption of violence at around 9 p.m. occurred during a calm protest over recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, with similar demonstrations occurring in cities across the country. As a barrage of gunfire ripped through the air, demonstrators and police officers alike scrambled.”

Police used a robot to detonate a bomb nearby the suspected shooter

“The suspect was holed up inside the El Centro College parking garage for several hours overnight Thursday before police moved to ‘blast him out,’ Mayor Mike Rawlings said Friday. The negotiations with the suspect had stalled. ‘We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was,’ Rawlings told reporters. ‘Other options would have exposed our officers in grave danger.'”

Man identified on social media questions by police then released

“On Thursday night, amid the chaos and horror surrounding the killings of five police officers in Dallas, the city’s Police Department released a photograph of a man it described as “one of the suspects.

“That man has since come forward, identifying himself as Mark Hughes. He said that he had presented himself to the authorities, had been questioned for 30 minutes and had been released.”

Black Lives Matter has condemned the shootings 

“Leading members of the BLM movement noted that although officers on the ground had paid the highest price for Thursday night’s violence, all involved were ‘traumatized’ by events.”

Large chunks of downtown Dallas are closed today, as the city grapples with its own “recurring nightmare

2. What role does Facebook play in the aftermath of these live video broadcasts?

“The video is another solemn chapter in our endless conversation about racial injustice and excessive police force. But for Facebook, it may well be a defining moment in how the world’s biggest social network handles the darker side of real-time, brought about by the company’s failure to answer substantive policy questions about its handling of a gruesome but important video posted to a platform that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has publicly touted as Facebook’s top priority.”

+1: What does watching someone die on social media do to our mental health?

3. Vancouver is Silicon Valley North. So why doesn’t it have Uber?

With spotty public transportation and a dearth of taxis, Canada’s third-largest city seemed built for ride-sharing. Regulators didn’t see it that way.”

4. Is Donald Trump planning to quit if he wins?

“Presented in a recent interview with a scenario, floating around the political ether, in which the presumptive Republican nominee proves all the naysayers wrong, beats Hillary Clinton and wins the presidency, only to forgo the office as the ultimate walk-off winner, Mr. Trump flashed a mischievous smile.

“I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens,’ he said minutes before leaving his Trump Tower office to fly to a campaign rally in New Hampshire.”

5. Don’t click this

“Reverse psychology is when we try to get a person to buy into a belief or behavior by suggesting the exact opposite of what they actually want. It works because we don’t like to be told what to do—so much so that we’ll do something we don’t want to do or don’t believe in just to assert our autonomy, even if that means doing something completely irrational or against our best interest. And we’re so stubborn we aren’t even aware it’s happening.”