FERGUSON • Seeing that a fellow African-American police officer had endured his fill of racial slurs shouted by people of his own race, Sgt. Harry Dilworth tapped the man’s shoulder and took his place facing protesters.

Riots following the Aug. 9 shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white officer make it a tough time to be on the Ferguson police force — and for Dilworth it’s tougher if the person in blue happens to be black.

Most of the insults he heard on the line that day are too graphic to print. Among the more polite are “sellout” and “Uncle Tom,” Dilworth said. He had stood with two other black officers, one from the Missouri Highway Patrol and one from the St. Louis County police.

“We didn’t blink,” he recalled in an interview this week. “We didn’t say anything to them. We stood there and took it. We all talked about it afterwards. I said, ‘Don’t address ignorance with ignorance.’

“But it’s hard to hear that from the minority group that you are representing ... You tune it out, but psychologically you’re dealing with scars. Some officers are going to see counselors. We’re not robots.”

Dilworth believes their hard facade is fueling some of the fire.