Organizers of the anti-violence protest during which the attack took place addressed media on Friday morning to speak out against the killings and give their condolences to the families of the officers killed. At least seven more officers and two civilians were wounded in the gunfire.
“We condemn the actions that took lives of five officers and wounded seven,” said Dominique Alexander, president of the Next Generation Action Network (NGAN). The group said it would fully cooperate with the police investigation.
The not-for-profit organization also said in a statement that it “does not condone violence in any form”, and noted that “these cowardly acts were committed by individuals in no way affiliated with NGAN”.
Another organizer of the march, the Rev Dr Jeff Hood, said at Friday’s press conference that he was “devastated that there were five families that weren’t going to find their loved one”.
A suspect in the shooting said he wanted to “kill white people, especially white officers”, and was “upset about Black Lives Matter”, Dallas police chief David Brown said early Friday morning. The man, identified by the Associated Press as Micah Johnson, told police he was not affiliated with any groups before being killed, according to Brown.
Three additional suspects are in custody, although it is not known if there was more than one shooter.
Organizers with Black Lives Matter, which is a national network of loosely linked chapters, also joined fellow activists in expressing outrage at the shootings.
“This is a tragedy – both for those who have been impacted by yesterday’s attack and for our democracy,” the BLM network said in a statement on Friday.
“Yesterday’s attack was the result of the actions of a lone gunman,” the statement continued. “To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible.”
The New York Daily News columnist Shaun King, a high-profile supporter of Black Lives Matter, said on Twitter that he hated police brutality but did not hate police. “This violence is wrong on every level,” he wrote.
Anyone blaming Black Lives Matter for the violence was sick, he said. The protesters in Dallas were peaceful, and the shootings “terrorized them too”.
The renowned civil rights leader and US congressman John Lewis made a plea for nonviolence Friday morning.
“Whatever we do, we must do it in an orderly, peaceful, nonviolent fashion ... We’re one people, we’re one family, we’re one house,” he said. “We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters.”
The Rev Jesse Jackson, the prominent civil rights activist, labelled the shootings a “well-planned terrorist attack”.
The march in Dallas was one of several organized throughout the country in the wake of police killings of two black men within 48 hours. Alton Sterling was shot and killed by Baton Rouge police on Tuesday, before Philando Castile was fatally shot on Wednesday by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
Sterling’s family released a statement condemning the attack in Dallas.
“Regardless of how angry or upset people may be, resorting to this kind of sickening violence should never happen and simply cannot be tolerated. Members of law enforcement have a very difficult job and the vast majority conduct themselves honorably as they protect and serve our communities,” the family said.
Ciara McCarthy
The Associated Press contributed to this report