On Being a Police Officer Ep. 77 Dallas PD’s Joe King with 28 years on; Honoring The Dallas Five; Pioneering Trauma-Informed Care through the Wellness Unit and the Assist the Officer Foundation.
Ep. 77 - Many of you know Dallas PD’s Joe King as the host of the compelling podcast “ATO: Bridging the Divide” which supports the mission of the Assist the Officer Foundation. Joe joined The Dallas Police Department in 1997, starting out in the Southeast Division. We talk about why he chose law enforcement, an early critical incident that sticks with him to this day, and how he quickly was drawn to street level narcotics and gangs which he worked for 20 years.
On July 7th, 2016, everything changed for Joe, the Dallas Police Department and Dallas. That night, while DPD was working an anti-police protest, a shooter opened fire on officers working the protest, killing five, injuring nine other officers and two civilians. Those we lost are known as the Dallas Five, and they include one of Joe’s close friends, Senior Corporal Lorne Ahrens. Joe recounts how the tragic events of that night unfolded with much of the killing horrifyingly playing out on live television. He details the SWAT response and the hours-long standoff that resulted in the shooter’s being neutralized by a bomb on a remote-controlled bomb robot.
The shooting was the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/ 11, surpassing the March 2009 shootings of four officers in Oakland, CA, and the November 2009 murders of four officers just south of Seattle in Lakewood, WA known as the Lakewood Four. Their deaths were preceded by the ambush murder of Seattle Police Officer Timothy Brenton less than a month earlier. I lived in the greater Seattle area at the time and experienced the devastation of this tragedy. When the Dallas Five were killed, as I tell Joe, I may have been thousands of miles away, but my heart was with Dallas.
Joe shares the impact on him and his fellow officers. His journey through grief and the cumulative effect of prior traumas led him to seek help through the Assist the Officer Foundation’s confidential counseling.
Joe has since joined the board of the Foundation which is a non-profit that not only provides trauma support but also financial assistance to first responders in need. Joe amplifies the mission with the “ATO: Bridging the Divide” podcast for which he interviews first responders from Dallas and around the country. They share their stories of trauma and resilience and how their agencies handle wellness.
Joe also helped create and serves on Dallas PD’s Wellness Unit which takes a very proactive role in caring for Dallas police officers. That Unit and ATO were both put to the test following the 2024 ambush murder of Officer Darron Burks who, only a few months out of the Academy, was shot and killed while in his patrol car. Joe says, “the Wellness Unit snapped into action that night. It was really a night-and-day response from 2016 to 2024 with critical incident response.”
Thank you, Joe for all you have done and for all you do.
I’d like to honor The Dallas Five for their service and for paying the ultimate sacrifice to protect the rest of us:
Officer Patricio Enrique Zamarripa
And to honor Police Officer Darron Burks
ATO:
ATO: Bridging the Divide podcast
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©Abby Ellsworth. All booking, interviews, editing, and production by Abby Ellsworth. Music courtesy of freesound.org
My interview with Jim Dudley on Police1’s “Policing Matters”
Thank you, K9sRbest for your review.