Black and Blue: Black officers in Miss. straddle line

More than once, Vicksburg Police Chief Walter Armstrong, who is black, recalls heading to his car out of uniform and hearing an unmistakable sound.

"I’ve been walking across a parking lot, and you can hear the doors locking as you pass the vehicle. I’ve seen that many times before. And you don’t know if this person is being conscious of their safety or fearful of me because of my race," Armstrong, a 33-year law enforcement veteran, said this week.

Across the nation, both perceived and real discord between the black community and law enforcement has left some black officers straddling a gap that continues to widen.

CITY IN STRIFE: Tupelo deals with aftermath of shooting

Officers across Mississippi said this reality does not change their duty, or the fact that they are in place to serve and protect the citizens of their communities. Locked vehicle doors or not, Armstrong said the national discord does not color how he sees his job or his town.

"I love law enforcement, and as long as I can see that I’m making a difference, I want to be part of it," he said.

Hinds County Sheriff Victor Mason said he has thought about what could happen if he was out of uniform and forced to stop a crime in progress.

“With the gun laws that are in place, it’s hard for us to determine who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy. If I’m off duty and have a weapon on me, and there’s a crime being committed in my presence, if the officers come in and don’t know who I am, who are they going to shoot first?" he said. "Me — if I’ve got a gun on a guy who’s on the ground saying, ‘Don’t shoot me’ — or him?”

RELATED: What happened that night in Tupelo?

Mason said that just makes setting the right example even more important.

"It’s a lot of pressure. When you’re in my shoes, you’re black, you’re a police officer, and you’re an administrator, so you have to uphold the law, but you also have to live the law,” he said.

Tchula Police Chief Kenneth Hampton said he's actually seen his white colleagues come across problems more than he has.

"The thing that’s happened — and it’s always happened, I hate to say it — but sometimes black people will try to play the race card when they could be guilty as hell, but they’ll play the race card thinking that the system will back off because 'this is trouble we don’t need,'" Hampton said. "But for the most part the system pretty much works."

Starkville Police Chief Frank Nichols said he has been in law enforcement for 24 years, and he has worked with officers who were around during the civil rights era.

"I’ve got a 19-year-old I just bought a car for, and I’ve given him the speech: 'You’re an African-American, and it shouldn’t make a difference — and it doesn’t in Starkville and Oktibbeha County because I know these officers and I trust them — but outside of my jurisdiction, you don’t know what you’ve got,'" he said. "I’ve seen a lot of things change. I know what people are capable of. I’ve seen the worst side of law enforcement, and I would hate to think that it still goes on. But I've also seen the best."

Jackson Police Chief Lee Vance said he's had "99 percent positive" experiences with his community.

"I don’t know whether or not mine has been a unique perspective or what, but I’ve never felt like that one single day during my tenure," he said. "I’ve found Jackson to be very supportive of me as a police officer all the way up through the ranks."

SEE ALSO: No indictment of Miss. officer

Armstrong said the actions of a small percentage of officers should not be applied to all law enforcement across the board, regardless of color.

"You have medical doctors, preachers, teachers who have done things against the law, and they were looked at individually," he said. "Any decent officer despises a crooked cop. It’s the same with preachers and educators and other jobs. They don’t want others in their profession out doing something that’s against the law. If a law enforcement officer has done something we don’t like, we will not let it continue. I take my oath of office very seriously."

Vance said there are screenings and tests in place to try to weed out officers who aren't in the business for the right reasons.

"Nobody knows for sure if a white officer shot a black man because he didn’t like black people other than that officer. Nobody knows if a black officer shot a white suspect because he doesn’t like white people. That comes from the heart," he said. "But there are some things about a man’s heart that a polygraph won’t tell you."

It's not a black and white thing to most officers; it's a good and evil thing, officers said.

"I’m the type of guy, people might say I’m hard, but I’m fair. I don’t see white or black; I see good or bad," Nichols said. "There are black people that are bad, and there are white people that are bad."

Armstrong said that regardless of race, police officers are real people with real and valid fears.

"If you’re willing to fight someone you know for sure is armed with a weapon, that’s a threat an officer shouldn’t take lightly," he said. "Was it justifiable for the officer to use deadly force? Who knows? If in the course of him trying to make the arrest, it leads to the person he’s trying to arrest doing something that can cause serious injury or death to the officer, he has to defend himself."

Armstrong said the entirety of an event must be considered in incidents like shootings.

"You have to look at the overall picture. The public uses a snapshot of a 10-second video to see if the officer acted appropriately. The courts can’t look at that. They have to look at the overall situation," he said.

Hampton said when he was forced to shoot at a suspect who was trying to run him down, he didn't have time to process the suspect's race. It didn't even come into play.

"All I see is a threat, that’s it. The same thing as when I was in the Marines, and here in law enforcement now, my only concern is to eliminate the threat with the minimum amount of force necessary," he said, noting that could mean lethal force.

He said it's a real problem that many white officers hesitate while protecting their own lives because of the high-profile shootings in the media.

"I kind of feel sorry that white officers feel that way, because that’s an officer that might not go home because he’s thinking about race," he said. "If I had to give (other) officers advice, I’d tell them that every morning when I put that badge on, I tell myself I’m going to be the one to take it off. Erase race out of your mind, and do what you have to do to get home to your family."

Contact Therese Apel at tapel@gannett.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.