Standoff

"On July 7, 2016, hundreds of protesters gathered in Dallas after the shooting of two black men--Philando Castile and Alton Sterling--by white policemen. One hundred Dallas police officers stood guard. At around nine p.m., a gunman opened fire into the line of officers from behind. Five were killed and a dozen more injured. Senior Cpl. Larry Gordon, a black twenty-one year department veteran, managed to keep the shooter talking, in part by bonding with him, to buy the SWAT officers enough time to come up with a strategy to take him out--one that was extremely controversial and unprecedented on American soil. Thompson's intimate portrait of the lives of the shooter and the hostage negotiator, as well as the officers, the black surgeon who operated on them, and their families, gets to the heart of the deeply pressing issue of race and policing in our country. In the aftermath of the shooting, police forces and white and black communities all over the country were left grappling with questions of who our police force protects, what constitutes a threat, and who is entitled to physical safety or self-defense in this country"--