Feb 16, 2021
AP Photo/Mead Gruver
Albany County Sheriff Aaron Appelhans stands in the county courthouse in Laramie, Wyo. Wednesday, Feb. 3.
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) As a student at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy, Aaron Appelhans used to look at the photos of past graduating classes hanging on the wall.
“I got to see, for the most part, ain’t a whole lot of people that looked like me around here,” he recalled of the mainly white faces.
A decade later, Appelhans was appointed Wyoming’s first Black sheriff, a post he took months after fury over racist policing roiled U.S. cities. His turf includes one of Wyoming’s last Democratic strongholds, but the state is overwhelmingly conservative and white and he’s already faced a racist remark from a lawmaker.
LARAMIE, Wyo. As a student at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy, Aaron Appelhans used to look at the photos of past graduating classes hanging on the wall. “I got to see, for the most part, ain’t a whole lot of people that looked like me around here,” he recalled of the mainly white faces. […]