Suburban chief says he has no regrets about not arresting Dallas chief’s son after incident

Chief: No regrets not arresting Dallas chief’s son

DALLAS — A suburban police chief said Wednesday that he has no regrets about the decision not to arrest the son of Dallas police Chief David Brown hours before the son shot and killed two people, including a police officer.

Lancaster Police Chief Keith Humphrey said there was nothing his officers could have done differently when they responded to a domestic disturbance call from the younger Brown’s girlfriend at an apartment complex Sunday, seven hours before the slaying of Lancaster police officer Craig Shaw and a bystander.

The Dallas chief’s son, David Brown Jr., was shot to death by police after the killings.

“(Brown Jr.) was frustrated because she had called” the police, Humphrey told The Associated Press. “But there was no reason to arrest him. I stand by my officers. I can’t second-guess.”

Humphrey said officers found no evidence of injuries or the presence of weapons. He said they also separated the younger Brown and his girlfriend, Misti Conaway, and spoke to them for more than 30 minutes.

Conaway told police that Brown Jr. was having a “psychotic breakdown” and was bipolar, but those conditions can’t be the basis for an arrest, Humphrey said.

“It’s not against the law to be crazy,” he said. “It’s not against the law to be psychotic. You have to see behavior that goes with it, and we didn’t see that.”

Conaway, 29, did not immediately respond to a message from the AP left with her grandmother.

The elder Brown was sworn in as Dallas police chief in May after five years as the top deputy to former chief David Kunkle.

On Sunday afternoon, Brown Jr. was discovered acting erratically at the apartment complex pool. He then shot and killed Jeremy McMillian, 23, who was driving into the complex with his two children, and later Shaw, 37, who responded to calls of gunfire.

The Dallas County sheriff’s office, which is investigating the shootings, released 911 recordings Wednesday in which people can be heard frantically calling for police.

“There’s some man that was running with a gun in his underwear and a lady screaming and there was shots fired,” one resident of the apartment complex said.

On another call, a man can be heard in the background yelling, “If they’re coming here, they’re too late!”

Dash cam video from police responding to the earlier domestic disturbance captured Conaway saying her boyfriend was acting like someone on the hallucinogenic drug PCP, accusing her of having affairs and screaming about God. She also stated that the man involved in the disturbance was the son of the new Dallas police chief.

Humphrey said the supervisor on duty called him to say what had occurred. As a result, he left a message about the matter on the elder Brown’s cell phone. He said the message wasn’t returned.

“I’m just a person who likes to let people know when we come in contact with people who are throwing their names out,” Humphrey said. “If another chief would do that for me, I don’t know. I don’t worry about that. I just worry about what I do. And it was strictly a courtesy call.”