KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dennis Shireff, a nearly 30-year police veteran, has never been shy about speaking out against what he saw as brutality and racism among his peers. While serving with the St. Louis police, he was even suspended for saying that the department recruited too many “Billy Bob, tobacco-chewing white police officers.”
So after the high-profile killings of unarmed black men by white police officers in Ferguson, Mo.; New York; and elsewhere, Officer Shireff, who now works for a small department outside St. Louis, feels the tug of conflicting loyalties: to black people who feel unfairly targeted by the police, and to his fellow police officers, white and black, who routinely face dangerous situations requiring split-second life-or-death decisions.
Now, with the recent murders of two New York City police officers by a man who claimed to be taking vengeance for the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner on Staten Island, his allegiances feel more divided than ever.
“With us being black officers, we get a double punishment because we feel the brunt of what happens to a police officer,” Officer Shireff, 52, said. “At the same time, it’s equally hard for us when we see a young African-American is killed at the hands of a policeman.”
At times they find themselves defending police procedures to fellow blacks who see them as foot soldiers from an oppressive force. At other times, they find themselves serving as the voice of black people in their station houses, trying to explain to white colleagues the animosity many blacks feel toward law enforcement. Life for black officers, many say, has long been a delicate balancing act.
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