Local NAACP president denounces ‘heartbreaking,’ ‘gut-wrenching’ murder of officers in Dallas



SEATTLE -- The head of the Seattle-King County branch of the NAACP offered his condolences Friday to the officers killed in what investigators called a coordinated, planned ambush of officers in Dallas.

The attack, which left five officers dead and seven others injured, “is not the way we go about making change,” said Gerald Hankerson, referring to anger among some across the county over the deaths of two black men at the hands of police.

Hankerson called the events in Dallas “heartbreaking” and “gut-wrenching,”

“It was a horrific incident that obviously the NAACP does not condone. It really just took away from what we’re talking about here, about young black men who have lost their lives in the streets and for someone to take this action into their own hands and go out and just start shooting up the police – we don’t condone that. We don’t support that. And it really took away from the fight that we’re trying to improve police accountability in this country.”