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People have been paying their respects with flowers, letters and signs, affixed to DPD cruisers parked in the plaza just outside the entrance to Jack Evans Police Headquarters. Lunchtime Saturday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and his wife Micki stopped to pay their respects at the memorial and to attempt to lift the spirits of officers inside. After the Rawlings left, people kept coming, lingering in the heat, seemingly unsure of how to feel or what to do.
Becky Braccio came with her husband and her chihuahua to give Starbucks gift cards to any police officer she saw. “It’s quiet and peaceful out here right now and I feel like it’s a good reflection time,” she said. “It’s solemn, but you try to be positive when you can.”
Chandler Davis, a University of North Texas student and Army veteran, began a uniformed stand at attention at the memorial at 12:20 p.m. His friend and fellow student at UNT, David Flannery, was on hand to help Davis stay hydrated.
“He’s here to serve as a visual example of the armed forces’ solidarity with the Dallas Police Department,” Flannery said of Chandler, who served ten years in the Army before retiring. “There’s a link between serving overseas as a combat soldier and serving in the United States as a police officer. You’re both standing in the line of fire.”
Many, if not most, of the adults at the memorial had their kids with them.
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“I wanted them to understand what we’d been through,” said Jennifer Carroll, who brought her 5- and 6-year-old sons Finley and Logan, on Saturday. “Being from Dallas, growing up in Dallas, it is hard to imagine something like this happening to us, happening in the great state of Texas. I’m amazed that all the cities that are around us are so filled with love and the outpouring of support. I wanted to make sure that my boys saw it.”
