‘Don’t let hate infect your heart’
Slain Baton Rouge officer remembered for urging city unity
BATON ROUGE, La. — Baton Rouge police Officer Montrell Jackson’s pleas for the city to unite and “don’t let hate infect your heart” echoed Monday throughout the funeral service that grieved a man who only four months earlier had been celebrating the birth of his son.
Jackson wrote those words days before he was shot to death, in a Facebook post that described the difficulties of being both a black man and a police officer. His younger brother, Kedrick Pitts, repeated the words again at Jackson’s funeral.
“All I wanted to do was be like you,” Pitts said, speaking to his brother. “Now I can brag about you being an angel.”
Then, he told the overflowing church: “God bless you all. Don’t let hate infect your heart.”
A 10-year veteran of the police force, Jackson and two other law enforcement officers were killed July 17 by a masked gunman who officials say appeared to be targeting police. Jackson was the last of the three to be buried.
Thousands packed the church in north Baton Rouge for a two-and-a-halfhour service celebrating the 32-year-old corporal in joyful singing and dancing mixed with tearful memories.
His flag-draped black casket, striped with a police officer’s blue, bore the Superman logo, a nod to his wife’s calling Jackson “her Superman.”
Mourners described Jackson as a loyal friend, an officer who loved his city and a proud father of his 4month-old son Mason.
Pitts joked of Jackson’s extensive shoe collection. Friend Gelrod Armstrong remembered his love of comics and a patrol car so spotless it even made a handcuffed man sitting in the back stop struggling and take notice. Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie called Jackson “a giant of a man, with a heart to match it.”
Nearly everyone who spoke mentioned the Facebook post, in which Jackson described himself — in the midst of recent protests over the shooting death of a black man by white police officers — as “tired physically and emotionally.”
“I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat,” Jackson wrote.
That emotional posting was printed on a bookmark and in the program given to funeral attendees. But rather than focus on Jackson’s sadness, friends and family stressed the message’s hopeful end.