Last year, Simeon Deskins received a Facebook message from a retired D.C. police officer. William Ritchie, who also is a genealogy buff, was trying to track down descendants of a man who was among the District’s first Black police officers.
This fall, D.C. police and the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Memorial and Museum for the first time have formally recognized Fleet as an officer who died in the line of duty. Fleet’s name has been added to a list of officers honored for their sacrifice.
That public acknowledgment, Deskins said, has been important to a family where many have continued in public service.
“You feel great. It’s an amazing type of thing that Black people could accomplish at such a crazy time,” said Deskins, a real estate agent based in Maryland. “I feel like our family has carried on that legacy of serving the country and serving the community.”
The effort to include Fleet on the list of fallen officers began last year when Donald Blake, president of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Memorial and Museum, a nonprofit group working to build a new memorial wall to commemorate officers who lost their lives on duty, learned about Fleet’s death from a researcher from Georgia and others.
However, information on Fleet’s death had previously been included in a report that was written a decade ago.
The report, “On Being Black in an Overwhelmingly White Police Department,” was presented by Sandra K. Schmidt at the 38th annual Conference on D.C. Historical Studies on Nov. 5, 2011. Schmidt stated that the objective of the paper was to “introduce you to some of the early African Americans who served on the MPDC and to discuss some of the issues with which they had to deal.”
In the report, Schmidt recounted the stories of some of the first Black members of the D.C. police force and described the circumstances of Fleet’s death.
“We had never heard of that, so we delved into it,” said Blake, also a retired 22-year veteran of the D.C. police. “We went back and got newspaper articles from 1874, and those articles all confirmed what the report said.”
According to the memorial and museum group’s website, Fleet was on patrol near the intersection of Q and 15th streets NW on Aug. 20, 1874, when he noticed a building on fire. He ran to the nearest fire alarm call box and reported the fire. Then he collapsed.
Passersby noticed Fleet’s body beside the call box and called for help, but he died. It was later determined that he had suffered a heart attack. Fleet was 32 years old.
Details posted on the memorial and museum group’s website said Fleet was working a midnight shift. The group noted he “would have been wearing one of the old, VERY HEAVY, BACKBREAKING, wool overcoats,” and said he ran “full tilt” three blocks to reach the fire box.
At the time of Fleet’s death, medical deaths were not recognized as line-of-duty deaths. This policy was changed in the 20th century. Though efforts were made to change the status of all qualified past officers, Fleet’s hadn’t been changed until this year.
“As part of our mission, we are always researching to add new or correct old information about our history,” Blake said.
As Blake’s group researched Fleet’s service, it also enlisted Ritchie’s help to find Fleet’s descendants and make sure they knew of their ancestor’s sacrifice.
Ritchie said finding Fleet’s living relatives was “a piece of cake.” In a matter of 48 hours after Blake reached out, he had built several family trees connecting Deskins and a few of his first cousins to Fleet.
According to the memorial and museum website, Fleet, a U.S. Navy veteran, had been with the D.C. police for almost five years and was among the first Black officers hired by the department. He is now listed as the first Black officer within the department to die in the line of duty. The husband and father of two was highly regarded by his colleagues, who described him as “a gentleman” in an 1874 account of his death published in the Washington Evening Star. Officials said they were unable to locate a photograph of Fleet.
“The whole history of him being a police officer, that is what I am just finding out about,” Deskins said. Deskins said Fleet’s service seemed especially poignant as many members of his family have served in the military, within law enforcement and also as firefighters. Deskins said both his brother and sister are military veterans.
Blake said his group took its research to D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III, who concluded that Fleet’s death was in the line of duty. During a memorial service outside D.C. police headquarters on Oct. 4, just over 147 years after his death, officials honored Fleet.
Three other D.C. police officers who died in the line of duty in 2020, Sgt. Donna L. Allen, Sgt. Mark. R. Eckenrode and Keith D. Williams, a senior police officer, also were acknowledged for their service. Allen and Eckenrode suffered medical emergencies not related to covid-19, while Williams succumbed to the virus.
“The road to becoming a Black police officer in the 1870s was not easy, to say the least. Officer Fleet faced racial discrimination and all sorts of discouragement placed in his path, and, yet, he persevered,” D.C. Assistant Chief Andre Wright said during the service. “He carried the hope and the faith that there would be many more Black officers like him.”
