LARAMIE, Wyo (AP) – As a student at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy, Aaron Appelhans regularly looked at photos of previous classes that hung on the wall.
“Most of the time I did not have to see many people who look like me here,” he recalls of the mostly white faces.
A decade later, Appelhans was appointed as the first black sheriff of Wyoming, a position he held months after the rage over racist policing hit American cities. His site contains one of Wyoming’s last democratic strongholds, but the state is overwhelmingly conservative and white and he has already faced a racist remark from a lawmaker.
This did not surprise him. Wyoming has made progress but remains “very racist”, said Stephen Latham, president of the NAACP state.
Like other parts of the country struggling with police violence, a deputy’s fatal shooting at an unarmed, mentally ill man played a key role in appointing Appelhans as sheriff in Albany County. The death of 39-year-old Robbie Ramirez during a traffic stop two years ago caused severe setbacks that were carried over to last summer’s protest action over racial injustice and police brutality.
The Albany County proper policing group was formed after the shooting and insisted that Appelhans take over when his predecessor, Dave O’Malley, retired.
“Let’s take this anger and pain and turn it into progress in our community,” said Democratic State Representative Karlee Provenza, the group’s executive director.
Appelhans, 39, grew up in Denver near Denver and had experienced family members. He understands both sides of the Black Lives Matter movement, he recently told The Associated Press.
“I’m one of those people who feels that law enforcement really needs to look at what we do,” Appelhans said. “Do we serve our community?”
Appelhans, a former sergeant at the University of Wyoming’s Police Department, became the largest law enforcement officer in December for a country more than three times the size of Rhode Island, but still only 650 African Americans out of 39,000 people.
The seat of the province is Laramie, home of the University of Wyoming and a liberal city still associated with the murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in 1998. Ramirez’s murder 20 years later attracted less attention, but fresh soul search.
A grand jury did not want to charge Deputy Sheriff Derek Colling for shooting Ramirez. Colling, who grew up in Laramie and knew Ramirez from school, killed two people as a police officer in Las Vegas before being fired there.
A lawsuit accuses Colling of killing Ramirez unnecessarily. O’Malley, the former sheriff, is alleged to have overlooked Colling’s “out of control temper” and hired him in part because his father was a friend.
Appelhans did not want to talk about Colling or the shooting incident, citing the department’s policy of not commenting on pending litigation.
However, he is hopeful that the allocation of funding and cooperation with local groups will mean fewer confrontations.
“We have ‘cops’ as a nickname,” Appelhans said. We are not ‘cops’. I am listed, just like every other deputy here, as a peace officer. We are here to keep the peace. And so this is one of the big changes I want to focus on law enforcement. ”
His work with the university force to try to reduce crimes such as sexual assault was encouraging, Provenza said.
“There are many opportunities for the sheriff to grow and to change and develop into something that will make this community feel safer to work with,” Provenza said.
Appelhans’ leadership training and experience as a detective and crime preventionman indicate “likely success” like the sheriff, said Mike Samp, chief of police at the University of Wyoming.
O’Malley, however, said the Democrats did not nominate anyone qualified for sheriff. O’Malley in Florida, where he now lives, said: “I think he’s far over his head, but, you know, it has yet to be seen.”
Because O’Malley was a Democrat, the Albany County Democratic Party recommended three sheriff finalists to the county commission, but not O’Malley’s top choice, an underbalance.
O’Malley declined to comment on Ramirez’s shooting or the lawsuit. Colling did not return a message, and his attorney declined to comment.
Ramirez’s family members and lawyers did not return messages to comment on Appelhans’ appointment.
Appelhans said he is not sure he wants to become sheriff because he will have to campaign next year to retain the post. The scarce opportunity to run a law enforcement agency and make reforms has changed its mind.
In December, Republican Rep. Cyrus Western responded to the news of Appelhans’ appointment by posting a clip online showing a black character from the movie “Blazing Saddles”: “Where are the white women?” In the film, a former slave serves as sheriff of a white city.
Western apologized publicly and in a call to Appelhans.
“It was one of the things I knew that would get the groundwork to get this job,” Appelhans said. ‘I do not look like everyone, I do not think like everyone. Some people are going to have problems with it, just based on the way I look. This is a problem in America. ”
Wyoming’s capital and largest city, Cheyenne, got its first black police chief, James “Jim” Byrd, in 1966. But considering colored people for the best job in law enforcement remains the exception rather than the standard practice, Latham told the NAACP in Wyoming.
‘You have to bring it to their minds and then they start thinking about it. But in this time and time again, it should not be something that is in the background, ”Latham said.