A BLACK OFFICER DIED BY SUICIDE, LEAVING ANGUISHED VIDEOS. ANOTHER OFFICER RECOGNIZED HIS PAIN.

submitted by rmrd0000 1 hour ago

Last month, Officer Shanette Hall told the head of her police department’s brand new wellness unit about a news story: A Black sheriff’s deputy in Louisiana had shot himself in the head while sitting in his patrol car, leaving behind anguished videos.

The deputy, Clyde Kerr III, said at one point that he could no longer abide by “this killing that’s going on, especially by the police, which I am.” Wearing his uniform in the videos that quickly spread online, he said he was “not having anything to do with this nonsense anymore.”

Whatever Kerr’s reasons for taking his life, Hall — a member of the St. Louis County Police Department — felt she recognized much of the pain in his parting messages.

“If I had to describe what it felt like being a Black woman officer, the most appropriate word would be … heavy,” said Hall, a leader in a mostly Black law enforcement association in St. Louis called the Ethical Society of Police. “It feels like you are wearing a wet blanket just on your back every day and you can’t get it off — everywhere you go, it’s on you.”

More than six years ago, following her police officer father, Hall said she signed up for a harrowing profession that can take a mental toll on anyone. But wearing a badge while Black has been its own burden. A reckoning over racism in policing and in the country the last year has heightened that burden for some and made it newly visible to others, as Black officers face racist abuse, anguish at the actions of others in law enforcement and intense community backlash.

“This has been a time like no other,” said Suwana Kirkland, president of the Minnesota branch of the National Black Police Association, which started connecting its members with chaplains — volunteer preachers and pastors — after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who went limp under the knee of a White Minneapolis officer.

Experts say Black officers face a unique pool of factors that can be detrimental to their mental health. They must also navigate their place in a work culture that values toughness and hypermasculinity with a history of being resistant to well-being, former and current officers told The Washington Post.

The Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol put the pain of policing while Black under another spotlight early this year, as one Capitol officer recounted breaking down in tears at the end of a day where rioters hurled racial slurs — an ugly story broadcast to the nation during impeachment proceedings.

Read the article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/07/black-police-officers-racism-protests/