Her recognition of him as a brave officer who risked his life saving people from a burning building is particularly jarring.
FWIW, that is the fundamental premise of the movie “Crash” (the one with Thandie Newton, not the one with James Spader). The racist shitbag cop was also a hero who saved Newton’s character from death. Nobody is 100% evil nor 100% good and frequently we are self-contradictory
