Slain Dallas police officer Patrick Zamarripa. Image courtesy of Twitter.
The father of one of five police officers killed in a deadly ambush in Dallas is suing Black Lives Matter for the death of his son.
According to The Dallas Morning News, Enrique Zamarripa — the father of slain Dallas officer Patrick Zamarripa — filed a 43-page lawsuit Monday against Black Lives Matter and a host of other defendants accusing the organization of inciting “anti-police” rhetoric. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern Texas, also blames the group for convincing their supporters that there’s a “civil war between Blacks and law enforcement, thereby calling for immediate violence and severe bodily injury or death.”
Other defendants named in the suit include the Nation of Islam, Rev. Al Sharpton, the New Black Panthers Party, and BLM activist Deray Mckesson, among others. Surprisingly, the suit doesn’t include the Next Generation Action Network — the organization that planned the downtown protest where Officer Zamarippa was ultimately shot and killed, The Dallas Morning News reports.
The slain officer’s dad is seeking nearly $550 million in damages.
“You’re suing somebody who had nothing to do with this rally,” said Next Generation Action Network founder Dominique Alexander. “The only thing this [lawsuit] has done is continue to feed the rhetoric. There is a problem in America, and we have to come together to address it.”
Officer Zamarripa, a native of Fort Worth,Texas, was on bike patrol on the night of the July 7 rally in downtown Dallas, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. Later on that evening, sniper Micah Johnson, 25, went on a shooting rampage targeting police over the recent killings of African-Americans at the hands of cops. Five officers, including Zamarripa, were killed, and seven others injured. Johnson was killed by a robot detonated by police.
In the suit, Zamarripa’s father claims that Johnson was “acting as an agent of and under the direction of” Black Lives Matter and the other named defendants. It should be noted that Black Lives Matter doesn’t have a local Dallas chapter, nor was the organization ever directly involved in the rally that night, according to Alexander.
“He served three tours in Iraq, he protected his country, and he protected everybody,” the father told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of his late son. “And he gave up his life doing that. When people were running away from the gunshots, he was running toward them.”
