‘Totally unacceptable.’ Beshear says state is investigating KSP presentation that quoted Hitler
Following Friday’s report that Kentucky State Police used a training presentation that favorably quoted Adolf Hitler, Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday said his administration is in the process of scouring all of KSP’s material used to train cadets in order to “take corrective action.”
“From what we can find thus far, that individual presentation was only given one single time to one single class,” which was in 2013, Beshear said during his daily coronavirus update. “But it is absolutely and totally unacceptable. There is no rationale or reason that is ever OK.”
Beshear said members of his Justice and Public Safety Cabinet were combing through state police’s training material because he wanted “all the facts.”
First made public in a story by two student journalists at duPont Manual High School in Louisville, the training slideshow, titled “The Warrior Mindset,” called on cadets to become “ruthless killer[s]”; instructed troopers to “have a mindset void of emotion” and to meet “violence with greater violence”; and contained three quotes and references to Hitler, including one from his anti-Semitic manifesto, Mein Kampf: “The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”
Part of the reason for the Cabinet’s investigation is to make sure the presentation was an “isolated incident,” Beshear said. But “it’s not just enough to know that this was a presentation we think was only given once.” The governor said he wants to ensure training for the state’s largest law enforcement agency is “where it should be for the world we live in right now. We are committed to making this right.”
Earlier on Monday, Beshear met with members of Kentucky’s Jewish community to apologize. In his daily update, he said, “To our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community in Kentucky, this should never have happened, and we are committed to making sure that not only does this never happen in the future, but that we repair any damage done in the past,” he said. “You should never have to wake up to or see this news.”
