To honor the memory of the five Dallas, Texas, police officers who died after a sniper shot them during a July 7 public protest event, uniformed Newtown police officers have been wearing a horizontal black ribbon across their badges. Seven other Dallas police officers were wounded in the nighttime incident.

Those ribbons of mourning will remain in place over the police badges until the five Dallas officers are buried.

Also as a symbol of mourning for the slain officers, the Main Street flagpole was flying a flag at half-staff until sunset on July 12.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Dallas Police Department…We have to stand together,"   Newtown Police Chief James Viadero said this week.

The families of the slain Dallas officers are experiencing the loss of lives, as are the families of the two men who died after they were shot by police last week in Louisiana and Minnesota, he said.

The initially peaceful protest in Dallas was held in response to the shooting deaths of those two black men by white police officers in those two states.

"Violence is not the answer… It's not an eye for an eye," Chief Viadero said the Dallas police being slain.

Of his emotional response after learning of the Dallas incident, Chief Viadero said, "It was like getting hit with a brick.

"They were targeted because they wore a uniform," he said.

"We're taking it personal… It's like the loss of a family members… It's tragic," he said.

Chief Viadero noted that on the morning after the Dallas shooting, people brought food, sympathy cards, and other symbols of sympathy to the police station.

"It helps us rebound," he said.

Asked whether local police plan for the possibility of an event such as the Dallas shootings, the police chief said, "You always have to plan."

Chief Viadero noted that without warning, on December 14, 2012, a rampaging gunman broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School and then shot and killed 20 first graders and six educators, before killing himself as police arrived on the scene. The gunman had shot and killed his mother at their Sandy Hook home before going to the school.