CARLTON FLETCHER: Law enforcement 2016: It’s the demographics

‘Cause the law is for protection of the people.

— Kris Kristofferson

Here’s what I saw as the saddest — and scariest — element of the deadly officer-involved shooting in Albany Wednesday.

The first thing anyone who’ll admit as much thought when word trickled out into the community that Albany Police Department Officer Derrick Williams had shot a man in self-defense while answering a complaint was: What color was the officer and the man who attacked him?

Maybe a few of us will say that we’re above such generalizing, but more than a few locals expressed relief that Officer Williams is African-American and also that the person he shot had attacked him before he defended himself with deadly force. There were murmurings of possible unrest if the officer who defended himself while in service to the community had been white.

That speaks volumes as to the cultural gulf that has widened, Grand Canyon-like, in our country over the past few years.

First of all, this incident highlights the difficulty of police officers’ jobs, already among the toughest professions in the world. We expect them to serve us and protect us, but to also do so in a way that doesn’t offend our various sensibilities. Sorry to cast aspersions on anyone who might think otherwise, but if you’re a police officer — no, a human being — who is faced with life or death and you have the means to prevent it, your self-preservation instinct is going to kick in.

You’ll worry about demographics after you’ve survived.

Second, the incident underscores the difficulty of being part of a law enforcement agency in 21st-century America. Officers are sworn to serve the entire community, and that’s what they do. Individuals who would judge an officer’s service under fire based on his skin color and the color of a perpetrator’s skin is no less a subversive than someone who would judge a fellow citizen based on that same criteria.

We do not have a “white” police force, a “black” force, a “gay/straight” force or an “other” force. Neither victims of crimes nor lawbreakers get to choose which officer responds to a call. This is not a buffet.

Sadly, though, because of some highly publicized incidents in this country — some of them instigated by the brutality of police officers who never should have been on the job — every law enforcement action is under scrutiny.

The local officer-involved incident also, I believe, showed once again that former interim City Manager Tom Berry made a wise choice when he selected Michael Persley as APD’s chief a little more than a year ago. Persley managed information about the incident prudently, first referring all questions to the GBI and, when the GBI finished its report, taking pains to protect both his officer and the integrity of the investigation.

When we in the media attempt to fulfill our duty of informing the public, our desire to get information out as quickly as possible — some, admittedly, placing the desire for expediency over accuracy — can work at odds to officials’ plan for releasing accurate information in as timely a manner as possible. Persley has shown during his tenure that he understands the media’s job, but he has not compromised an investigation to meet the media’s self-imposed deadlines.

Certainly, being part of said media, I’m torn in that respect. But when the incident involves the taking of a human life and the dissemination of information has the potential to touch off a powder keg of community discontent, I’ve come to understand and even appreciate the process Persley has implemented.

It’s more than sad — it’s frightening, actually — to think that there were “professional protesters” sitting at the ready when word of the officer-involved shooting got out. It’s not hard to imagine these lowest of the low hoping for a worst-case scenario that would give them an opportunity to foment their brand of righteous indignation with little to no regard for the facts of the incident.

Alas, these troublemakers’ attentions have turned elsewhere, looking for the next self-serving opportunity to disrupt a community for which they have no ties. And others have breathed a sigh of relief, comforted that the demographics in this incident were “favorable.”

Lost in all of this sickening self-interest is the fact that an apparently mentally disturbed man — who leaves behind grieving family — has lost his life. There was a time when we all would have shared in that collective loss.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.