A Black surgeon who saved the lives of some of police officers shot in the Dallas shooting said he could understood the anger driving recent protests across the United States.
“Black men dying and being forgotten. People retaliating against the people that are sworn to defend us. We have to come together and end all of this,” Brian Williams, a trauma surgeon at Parkland Hospital, which received the five officers killed and nine wounded in Thursday night’s attack, said in a press conference Monday afternoon.
Williams also noted that he tended to pay for police officers’ meals when he saw them dining in Dallas-area restaurants, in part to show his children he respects law enforcement, according to The New York Daily News.
“I want my daughter to see me interacting with police that way so she doesn’t grow up with the same burden that I carry, when it comes to interacting with law enforcement,” Williams said.
He continued, “And I want the Dallas Police to also see me, a black man, and understand that I support you, I will defend you and I will care for you. That doesn’t mean that I do not fear you. That doesn’t mean if you approach me, I will not immediately have a visceral reaction and start worrying for my personal safety.”