Grounding your police in fantasies about a Divinity does not bring me comfort:
The police department that wrongly shot Breonna Taylor dead in her own apartment in 2020 had trained its officers just three years earlier that they are avengers who carry out “God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
New reporting by the Louisville, Ky., independent newspaper LEO documents that in 2017 Louisville Metro Police applied a Bible verse to a mandatory firearms training class. The verse from Romans 13:4 was superimposed over a “thin blue line” flag as the final image in the training slideshow. [Baptist News]
BN’s article seems at least faintly disapproving, but it’s not an opinion piece, but rather reporting. That this is a problem is apparent to some:
Bruce Williams, senior pastor at Bates Memorial Baptist Church in the Smoketown community of Louisville, told LEO he finds use of the verse by Louisville police an example of “weaponizing scriptures.”
“It’s more evidence of what’s kind of in the DNA of America,” he said. “And that is a history of weaponizing scriptures to justify violence sometimes and damnable ends.”
If we momentarily discard the question of whether there’s a Divinity at all, one of the problems of a difficult text such as the Bible having such authority is that most folks don’t really sit down and read it. Instead, they take the word of their cleric.
And if that cleric is ambitious?
Shit like this happens.
I don’t want my police officers fantasizing they’re God’s Avengers. I want police officers who are soberly aware of their responsibilities, and act accordingly.
