Dale Hansen Speaks Truth About The Dallas Shooting

Sportscaster Dale Hansen of Dallas' WFAA has a history of speaking truth to his audience.

And in the wake of last night's deadly shooting, he unleashed an unfiltered white light on the facts of what happened in downtown Dallas and how we got there.

You have to watch this.

Text of the video:

The Rangers lost to Minnesota last night, and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you I know that.

I'm in my office, watching the game, and then all hell breaks loose in our city.

Reporters in our newsroom were scrambling. Producers were yelling. We turned off the lights, just in case... and I kept watching the game.

It was another shooting in America. It was in our city this time and police officers were being killed, but it was a couple of blocks away and the Rangers were being shut out.

This is what I have become. This is what too many of us have been for a long time now.

We'll fly our flags at half-mast, we'll say all the right things, we'll make promises we won't keep, and then, nothing will change.

Our lives will go on, while the lives of so many others won't, because we expect it now and we accept it.

It wasn't this way when I was a boy, but it is life in America now.

But shooting a police officer is not the answer to a problem that too many people deny: Police officers are not like you and me -- they're better.

They run into the darkened alley where we won't go. They run into the buildings we run from. They look for the person we try to hide from.

But they're not allowed to make the human mistakes that we all make, because they have the power of God strapped to their hip and the authority to use it.

When we talk about blindly supporting the blue and when we try to show our support for these brave men and women, we fail to realize we can't defend them all and we shouldn't defend them all.

A white man in America doesn't die for selling cigarettes on a street corner, he gets a ticket. A white man in America doesn't die for driving with a broken tail light, he gets a ticket, too. And the officers who abuse the badge and the power they have should be punished, but too many times they are not.

But what possible purpose does opening fire on the streets of Dallas do to right the wrongs too many people deal with every day?

As one of those on the city streets last night told a reporter, the shooter might have killed the good cops.

A person of color has always hated to be painted with a broad brush -- to suffer the indignity of the stereotype so many people claim as fact. And then that killer last night did exactly the same thing -- shooting at anyone in blue, because don't we all really know, they're all the same.

America's problem has come to Dallas now, and our lieutenant governor blames the peaceful protestors, because our lieutenant governor is a fool.

It was not just an attack on the Dallas police, it was an attack on our basic humanity and the common decency we used to cherish in America.

But that's all gone now -- we lost that a long time ago.

The Rangers lost last night, 10 to 1. And I'm almost embarrassed to tell you I know that.