Obama tells police that Dallas shooting was hate crime

On the eve of a memorial service for five slain Dallas police officers, President Obama said the black sniper who killed the white officers would have been prosecuted for a hate crime if he were still alive.

Mr. Obama made the comment in a meeting at the White House Monday with the leaders of six law-enforcement organizations.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, said Mr. Obama compared the shootings in Dallas to the murders last year of black worshippers in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a white gunman.

“He suggested that if the shooter were still alive in Dallas, he most certainly would be prosecuted by the federal government for a hate crime,” Mr. Pasco told NPR Tuesday.

The head of the police union said the president’s comment was “unprecedented,” noting that the FOP has been calling for such a decision since the late 1990s in cases where police are targeted.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch made a similar comment about Dallas being a hate crime in a meeting with police officials on Friday, Mr. Pasco said, but Mr. Obama “was even more adamant on it.”

The gunman in Dallas, Micah X. Johnson, told police that he deliberately shot white officers, and he was upset about the Black Lives Matter movement. Police ended a standoff by killing Johnson with a robot carrying a bomb.

The president is attending a memorial service in Dallas Tuesday for the slain officers. The White House said Mr. Obama also intends to raise the issue of police shootings of minorities.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden, who also attended the meeting with police officials at the White House Monday, said Mr. Obama rejected the criticism that he doesn’t support law-enforcement officials.

“He gave a list. He said, ’I’ll be happy to send you all of these statements that I have made,’ ” Mr. Biden said on CNN. “I don’t think that the [police groups] heard loudly and clearly, that, he in fact has, repeatedly, been supportive of the police organizations.”

The president also told the police groups that there is still “institutional discrimination” among police departments.