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Kentucky police commissioner resigns amid report on training slideshow that quoted Hitler

LOUISVILLE, Ken. — Kentucky’s top cop resigned Monday, three days after a group of high school journalists reported about a training slideshow that featured multiple quotes from Nazi leader Adolph Hitler and encouraged state police cadets to be “ruthless killers.”

Rodney Brewer’s resignation goes into effect on Wednesday. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has chosen Lt. Col. Phillip Burnett to serve as acting commissioner.

Beshear appeared to be caught off guard when the story was reported last week by the Manual Redeye, the student newspaper of duPont Manual High School, a public magnet school in Louisville.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” Beshear said Friday in a statement. “It is further unacceptable that I just learned about this through social media. We will collect all the facts and take immediate corrective action.”

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Beshear on Tuesday refused to say if he asked for Brewer’s resignation, despite being asked the question by multiple reporters during a regular media briefing on the state’s COVID-19 numbers. He also declined to say if the report by the high school newspaper is what led to the commissioner’s departure.

“I’m just going to thank him for his service,” the governor said. “That’s what he deserves.”

Beshear did acknowledge that one similar piece of training material had been uncovered since Friday’s report by the Redeye.

“We have identified at least one other PowerPoint (slideshow) that appears to contain some of the same information, from the same trainer,” he said. “We have not yet been able to determine whether it is a different version (or) whether it was provided at a different time. We want to make sure we get answers to all of those questions because we want to be able to look backwards and say, ‘Well, how many people went through this?’ and figure out how they perceived it, to make sure we can right any wrong there.”

Watch Gov. Andy Beshear address Brewer’s resignation below. Questions from reporters begin around the 9-minute mark.

He said the “top to bottom” review is also being designed to ensure that the state has the right training for trooper cadets moving forward.

“I want the public to know that I’ve heard from so many active and former KSP troopers who, to a person, say that this training is not who they are,” Beshear said.

Beshear appointed Brewer to serve a second stint as commissioner in January. Brewer had previously served in the role from December 2007 to February 2016, according to the Redeye.

A 33-year Kentucky State Police veteran, Brewer was the agency’s longest-serving commissioner. His biography on the agency’s website stated that he has served in a number of capacities, from uniformed operations to the protection detail protecting the governor and lieutenant governor.

He also served as commander of the training academy where the slideshow surfaced. He was police commissioner at the time the presentation was created.

CBS News reported that the slideshow, titled “The Warrior Mindset,” first came to light when attorney David Ward made an open records request as part of a lawsuit involving a detective who shot and killed a man in 2018 in Harlan County.

Ward, who had requested the materials used to train the detective, shared the slideshow with the Redeye staff.

One slide, titled “Violence of Action,” encourages cadets to “be the loving father, spouse and friend as well as the ruthless killer.” It also includes one of several Hitler quotes embedded into the presentation.

“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence,” the quote reads.

The quote is from Hitler’s manifesto, “Mein Kampf.” The presentation links to a Hitler page on Goodreads, an online database of books, authors and quotes, the Redeye reported.

The slideshow includes a total of three quotes from Hitler, making him the most quoted person in the 33-slide presentation. Other people quoted include Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, President George Bush, author J.R.R. Tolkien, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and fictional superhero Batman.

Other slides in the presentation urge cadets to embrace “a mindset void of emotion” and to “meet violence with greater violence.” The presentation discusses combat and features military imagery on several of the slides.

The final slide, which features the iconic photograph of U.S. Marines raising the flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, also bears the phrase “Über Alles,” German for “above everything.” The phrase, which was once part of Germany’s national anthem, has been associated with the Nazi party.

Kentucky State Police spokesperson Lt. Joshua Lawson told the Redeye in a statement that the quotes were used for their “content and relevance to the topic addressed in the presentation.”

“The presentation touches on several aspects of service, selflessness and moral guidance,” Lawson continued. “All of these topics go to the fundamentals of law enforcement, such as treating everyone equally, service to the public and being guided by the law.”

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Lawson also told the student newspaper that the presentation appeared to have been created by an academy instructor in 2013. He said he was unaware of how many times the presentation had been used.

Morgan Hall, communications director for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, later told the Redeye staff that the slideshow was not used after 2013.

The Redeye report on the slideshow was met with anger and consternation. U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky tweeted that he was angry.

“As a Kentuckian, I am angry and embarrassed,” Yarmuth wrote. "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.

“And don’t give us the ‘it’s a few bad apples’ excuse. This is a poisonous culture that has gotten too many innocent people harassed and killed, and we refuse to stand for it any longer.”

Corey Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU of Kentucky, also wrote that the “bad apple” analogy is wrong and praised the high school reporters who broke the story.

“This is not one ‘bad apple.’ This is about how Kentucky State Police encouraged brutality, glorified violence, and spoiled the entire lot,” Shapiro tweeted. “Thank you, @manualredeye, for this amazing journalism.”

The Anti-Defamation League tweeted that it is “entirely inexcusable” for a state police presentation to contain the words of Hitler.

“ADL is actively working in the state to determine what happened and ensure it doesn’t happen again,” the tweet read.

In a statement to CBS News, Hall on Tuesday said authorities are reviewing all the agency’s training materials in the wake of the report.

“As of today, the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet continues to work diligently to swiftly and thoroughly conduct an internal review of all training materials and will provide information as it becomes available,” Hall said.