How a Back the Blue rally went haywire, and left a police mother worried and grieving
Everything about policing gets political these days, and it breaks a grieving mother’s heart.
“It’s just really tough and hard,” Valerie Zamarripa said, after riding as an honored guest in what began as a Back the Blue Cruise truck and biker club rally but turned into an ugly spectacle by the time it reached a south Dallas church.
The caravan of nearly 1,000 pickups and motorcycles had picked up a racist militia, a Confederate battle flag and a Donald Trump 2020 campaign flag. Then, of all places, the giant truck and biker rally swarmed into the parking lot of a prominent social-justice Baptist church to stop for a break.
Four years ago, Valerie Zamarripa’s police officer son Patrick, 32, was ambushed and shot dead in Dallas by a violent loner while protecting a Black Lives Matter protest against police killings.
“Not all officers are bad,” she said. “My son was a good one.”
But not everybody who says they back the blue is really a friend to law enforcement.
For example, in both the road rally and the recent violent attack in Weatherford against a Black Lives Matter protest, the various organizers included at least one ex-offender with a child sex offense history or multiple DWIs.
Then there was the recent March for America in Fort Worth.
It was billed as a pro-police rally but was organized by a partisan activist and featured candidate speeches.
In a time of divisive and hostile national and local politics, law officers must rise above anything partisan, especially if they’re wearing a uniform or using publicly owned vehicles or logos.
People who make law enforcement partisan or political are not really friends to police.
Valerie Zamarripa said she was up front and didn’t see the Confederate or Trump flags in the Back the Blue Cruise.
She originally heard about the event from Nathan Abrams of Bedford and the Texas Ram Club, as in the Ram pickup. The Ram Club was a co-host with the North Texas Jeep Club.
“When I got to the [rally] lineup and saw the love and outpouring for the blue — I needed to see that,” she said.
“It was going good until we got to that church.”
An official at Friendship-West Baptist Church said a rally organizer had asked permission for a stopover by a small car club of about 30 vehicles.
Not 1,000 bikers and pickups including a “Three Percenter” militia, jamming streets and nearby gas stations and restaurants.
(Clogging traffic does not seem like a way to support police.)
When church pastors and members arrived, they ordered the swarm to leave.
The church has a Black Lives Matter banner.
“We weren’t there to give anybody a hard time,” Zamarripa said.
“Somebody somewhere got it wrong, or somebody misunderstood.”
Whether it was a malicious prank or a rally gone haywire, it was an example of how bad communication can lead to resentment and misgivings.
Zamarripa knows she has to protect her name, and Patrick’s.
“If anything gets political, my daughter doesn’t want me to be involved in that,” she said.
This is already shaping up as a long August. It’ll be a long three months of campaigns in national and local elections wrapped in debates over law enforcement.
Zamarripa is working on ways to keep the focus on the good work police do, and on her son.
There’s hope for a mural of Patrick Zamarripa near his old home off Hemphill Street.
She is still heartbroken at losing him, and now at the hostility toward law enforcement.
“I just have to pray hard every day,” she said.
“I just hope this gets worked out.”
That would be a good way to remember Patrick Zamarripa.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 2:37 PM.
