The Nazi leader was quoted on three separate occasions in a police training presentation
Kentucky state police have faced condemnation for repeatedly quoting Adolf Hitler in a training manual for new police officers.
The Kentucky police presentation also stressed the need for ‘ruthless’ violence, and called on police officers to ‘meet violence with greater violence.’
The Kentucky state police document also quotes Confederate leader Robert E. Lee, a Civil War general who opposed racial equality for African Americans.
Police in Kentucky respond to protests following the death of Breonna Taylor. (Photo: Getty)The news was first broken by Manual Redeye, a student newspaper from duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky.
According to Manual Redeye, Hitler is quoted three separate times in the police training document – making him the most-quoted individual in the presentation.
On one slide entitled ‘Violence of Action’, trainee officers were told to be ‘ruthless killer[s]’, and to have ‘a mindset void of emotion’.
The Nazi leader’s manifesto Mein Kampf is also quoted in a slide, stating: ‘the very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.’
The training presentation also includes links to Hitler’s page on Goodreads, a literary database of quotes and books.
The news understandably caused uproar in the United States.
Rep. John Yarmuth, a representative of Kentucky’s Third District in the US Congress, tweeted his anger at the police department.
I am angry. As a Kentuckian, I am angry and embarrassed. And as a Jewish American, I am genuinely disturbed that there are people like this who not only walk among us, but who have been entrusted to keep us safe. There needs to be consequences. https://t.co/Bpu6b1eJWr
— John Yarmuth 🥃 (@JohnYarmuth) October 30, 2020
Rep. Yarmuth said: “I am angry. As a Kentuckian, I am angry and embarrassed. And as a Jewish American, I am genuinely disturbed that there are people like this who not only walk among us, but who have been entrusted to keep us safe. There needs to be consequences.”
There have been repeated calls for a review into the way police are trained in the United States.
The deaths of George Floyd and Louisville, Kentucky resident Breonna Taylor at the hands of police provoked wide-scale protest – not only in the USA, but worldwide.
Kentucky state police have reportedly told Manual Redeye that the training presentation was old and no longer in use.
