Attacks on police officers: ‘I think uniform was target’

Associated Press

A manhunt for a suspect in the fatal shooting of a veteran Texas police detective ended Monday with an arrest in the killing that was one of several weekend attacks against law enforcement in multiple states, authorities said.

The San Antonio detective and officers shot in Missouri and Florida were conducting routine tasks Sunday when they became the targets of violence. The detective was writing a traffic ticket when he was shot to death in his squad car Sunday morning outside police headquarters.

“I think the uniform was the target, and the first person that happened along was the first person that [the suspect] targeted,” San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said Monday.

In Missouri, a St. Louis police sergeant was shot twice in the face Sunday evening while he sat in traffic in a marked police vehicle. He was released from a hospital Monday.

The shootings were the latest in what law-enforcement officials say is an alarming spike in ambush-style attacks. Sixty officers, including the San Antonio detective, were shot to death on the job this year, compared with 41 in all of 2015, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Of the 60 killed, 20 were purposely targeted by their assailant compared to eight last year, the group said.

Police officers also were shot and injured during traffic stops in Sanibel, Fla., and Gladstone, Mo., on Sunday night, but authorities have not suggested these were targeted attacks. All the shootings come less than five months after a black military veteran killed five white officers at a protest in Dallas.

Race was a factor in the Dallas attack, but police have not said if race played a part in any of the attacks Sunday. In San Antonio, police say the suspect is black and the officer was white. In St. Louis, the suspect was black, but police have not released the officer’s race. Most killings of police officers are carried out by white men, and most people shot and killed by police are white, said Craig W. Floyd, president of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

San Antonio Detective Benjamin Marconi, who was killed Sunday while writing the ticket, was a 20-year veteran of the force. Chief McManus said Monday evening that a 31-year-old man, Otis Tyrone McKane, was arrested on a capital murder warrant without incident after the car he was riding in was stopped Monday afternoon on an interstate.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson declined to name the 46-year-old officer who was shot and wounded there. He said the officer is a married father of three and has been with the department for about 20 years.

“This officer was driving down the road and was ambushed by an individual who pointed a gun at him from inside of his car and shot out the police officer’s window,” Dotson said.

The suspect, 19-year-old George P. Bush III, was wanted for questioning in recent violent crimes that included several robberies, a carjacking and perhaps a killing, Dotson said without elaborating. Police said Bush was later killed in a shootout with officers.