Dallas Streets Reopen, Police Memorial To Be Removed
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Eleven days after the Dallas police ambush, and the downtown area is still slowly returning to normal. That includes streets near El Centro College, where the shooter was cornered and eventually killed, and the memorial outside of the Dallas Police Department's headquarters.
All of the downtown streets surrounding El Centro College are back open as of Monday morning. A large swath of the area had been shut down in the days following the attack. Roads were then slowly reopened as investigators wrapped up with portions of the massive crime scene.
Hazardous materials teams are still finishing work inside of the downtown Dallas college building. A police spokesperson said that they are in the process of turning control back over to the school and determining when students and staff members will be allowed to return to campus.
Meanwhile, about a mile away, people continue to come and pay their respects at a memorial for the fallen. Five police officers were killed in the Dallas ambush, and two squad cars sit parked ouside of the downtown police building covered with candles, cards and balloons.
Thousands of people have already stopped by that memorial. Many of the items that were left behind have already been taken inside of the building for safe keeping -- such as flowers that started to die and stuffed animals that had gotten soaked during a recent bout of rain.
If you want to visit the memorial, you have until Tuesday evening, when the entire thing becomes a piece of history. Police will start to remove everything from the area at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday. From there, professional archivists from the Dallas Public Library will document, preserve and store all of the handwritten messages and non-perishable items in the library's collection of archives. They want to make sure that it is available for others to see in the future.