Though they cannot be justified, the Dallas police shootings must be fully analysed and understood

This was not some random act of violence – it was a politically motivated act of terror conducted with the crudest of racial motives

Dallas Police respond after shots were fired at a Black Lives Matter rally in downtown Dallas (AP)

President Obama is at his best at moments such as this, when America is traumatised yet again by violence and murder on its streets. The shooting of police officers in Dallas was, as he said, “vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement”.

It is, sad to say, not difficult to discern what motivated those involved in the police shootings – a long record of police brutality and unlawful killings by police across the United States. Most recently, these included Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. It was their deaths that sparked the protest that became the scene of this latest slaughter.

But the cases of Castile and Sterling were merely the most recent examples of something that has been going on virtually since the birth of the nation. The difference now is that so many of these outrages are caught on camera, so the facts cannot be easily disputed and the images reach into every home. There is, once again, a mass movement aimed at protecting the human rights of black people in America – Black Lives Matter.

Race is the unavoidable factor. This was not some random act of violence; it was a politically motivated act of terror conducted with the crudest of racial motives – as when one of the suspects said that he wanted to kill white people and white police officers. The police believe that there was more than one sniper involved and that they “triangulated” their positions to take the maximum toll: planned, lethal, racial terror.

Nothing can justify what has happened in Dallas. Yet the events demand to be analysed and understood, and the reasons for this resort to terror made clear.

As the President has pointed out, African Americans are 30 per cent more likely than whites to be pulled over by police. After being pulled over, African Americans and Hispanics are three times more likely to be searched. Last year, African Americans were shot by police at more than twice the rate of whites.

On being found guilty of an offence, black citizens receive sentences that are almost 10 per cent longer than those handed out to white people when arrested for the same crime. That hurts. It creates a climate of resentment, and makes it easier to hate.

Every police force and every court in the US has to run a permanent campaign against conspicuous and unconscious prejudice. Policing America’s great cities is a tough job but, as we have witnessed time and again, it has to be done by consent and with the confidence of the communities concerned. That is simply the right thing to do, but it is also obviously the way to avoid attacks on the forces of law and order.

We saw in the England riots of 2011 how an isolated incident can start a chain reaction that results in a national near-collapse of the rule of law. There are lessons to be learned too from the experience of policing in Paris – again, not always conducted to the high standards set by the authorities themselves.

It is tempting to think of America as sui generis, with its history of racial conflict and widespread ownership of guns. As the examples of similar events around the world demonstrate, there is nothing that special about the United States.

Still, it is undoubtedly the case that the ease with which those with evil intent can legally obtain weapons with the capacity to kill dozens in seconds has been an obvious factor in so many so-called sprees. As he knows well, reforming law enforcement, bolstering civil rights and gun control are not tasks that President Obama will be able to complete in what’s left of his time in office.

The next President will have to lead the way. The omens are not encouraging.