Justice Department warned of attacks against police prior to Baton Rouge ambush: Report

The Justice Department issued a bulletin warning law enforcement officials about possible gang-related attacks against the police two days before a gunman fatally shot three officers and injured three others in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ABC News reported Wednesday.

In a July 15 warning sent out to agencies across the country, the department’s National Gang Intelligence Center acknowledged receiving reports suggesting gang members may be plotting to target police officers.

“Gang-related threats and attacks on LEOs [law enforcement officers] have been reported in multiple jurisdictions since the Dallas shootings, and suggest that individuals and gang members may be targeting LEOs for retaliatory violence,” the bulletin read. “Gang members have also issued multiple threats of violence towards LEOs via social media following the Dallas shootings and the officer-involved shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota.”

The bulletin was issued hardly a week after five law enforcement officials were gunned down in Dallas by a man who said he opened fire in response to recent officer-involved shootings that had claimed the lives of two black men in Baton Rogue and Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

Those shootings are explicitly cited in the bulletin, as well as the subsequent sniper attack in Dallas on July 7.

Two days after the bulletin was released, police say 29-year-old Gavin Long shot six officers in Baton Rouge, killing three.

The bulletin claims that at least two streets gangs have recently discussed targeting law enforcement officials among its members, ABC reported.

A high-ranking member of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang in Chicago expressed an interest this month in killing a federal law enforcement official, and an FBI source told investigators that United Blood Nation (UBN) leadership is encouraging gang members to attack police by promising elevated status to individuals who follow through, according to the report.

“If the movement to target and assassinate cops expands past lone wolves — as we have thus far seen in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and other cities — and mobilizes violent gang members nationwide … the effect could be overwhelming,” said Steve Gomez, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer and FBI agent who is now a contributor to ABC.