The officer-targeted police massacre in Dallas Thursday night has sent aftershocks through law enforcement agencies far and wide.
Department leaders are asking themselves what more they can do in the way of “community policing” – is there something they’re still missing?
"It's not 'us against them',” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore told NBC 7 in an interview Friday. “To the extent that we let that happen, we all lose. We are part of the community, and we are stronger when the community feels that and they work with us in community policing."
Gore, a former local agent-in-charge for the FBI, says he’s emphasizing training de-escalating confrontational situations.
His department has lost nine deputies in the line of duty over the years.
But Gore says he didn't think he needed to double up patrol units last night, as several police chiefs, including San Diego's did.
SDPD's Shelley Zimmerman, whose department has buried 34 officers with solemn honors, Is carrying on a "community policing" tradition begun in the '70s by the late Bill Kolender -- another San Diego police chief, who went on to become a three-term.
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Zimmerman told NBC 7 that there's been an outpouring of support for her "thin blue line".
“Many emails, many text messages, many phone calls,” she said. “We just had somebody stop by delivering flowers to our police department, and a very heart-warming note to our police officers -- letting them know how much they appreciate what our officers do every single day."
At the time of the Dallas sniper attack, social media was hit with a flood tide of hatred, directed at the law enforcement community.
It was called out and denounced to the point where it subsided.
But the angry sentiments remain evidence of deep-seated societal divisions that need healing.
