The accused deputy allegedly yelled the N-word at an African-American colleague who was walking out of his home with his wife and kids.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming’s first Black sheriff last year fired a high-ranking white deputy who is accused of tormenting a Black subordinate for years with racist name-calling that led him to quit, a new federal lawsuit reveals.
The allegations put a new spotlight on the sheriff’s office in Laramie, the Albany County seat known for the murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998, a crime that drew unprecedented attention to LGBTQ rights and hate crimes. The racism allegations come after Sheriff Aaron Appelhans’ appointment as Wyoming’s first Black sheriff in the wake of an outcry in Laramie over a deputy’s 2018 shooting of an unarmed man who had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.
An internal review two months after Appelhans took office found that despite Handley’s “widespread and well-known” racism, Handley was emboldened by getting preferential treatment for promotions ahead of the more-experienced Johnson, the lawsuit alleges.Advertisement Handley began subjecting Johnson to “overt and abhorrent racism” when they were both deputies from 2011 to 2014 and Johnson was the department’s only Black officer, the lawsuit alleges.