Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rodney Brewer announced Monday his resignation effective Wednesday.- The reason for his resignation has not been made clear, but it came days after high school journalists in Louisville reported the police force had once used quotes from Hitler in material to train officers.
- A spokesperson for the
Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet confirmed Brewer's resignation Tuesday and said "the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet continues to work diligently to swiftly and thoroughly conduct an internal review of all training materials."
Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rodney Brewer on Monday announced his resignation from the state agency, Insider confirmed.
His resignation, effective Wednesday, comes just days after high school journalists in Louisville reported that the KSP as recently as 2013 used quotes from Adolf Hitler's "Mien Kampf" manifesto in materials used to train officers on the force.
The training materials were first reported Friday by the Manual RedEye, a student-run newspaper run at duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky. Students obtained the training materials through a local attorney who had obtained them as part of the discovery process in a lawsuit against a detective who in 2018 shot and killed a man in Harlan County, Kentucky, according to the report.
On one slide used to train new officers, trainees were instructed to act as "ruthless killer[s], to "meet violence with greater violence" and to enter a situation with a "mindset void of emotion," the Manual RedEye reported.
On the same slide appeared a quote from "Mien Kampf," Adolf Hitler's fascist and anti-Semitic manifesto, reading "the very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence," according to the slideshow published by the Manual RedEye.
According to the report, Hitler was cited three times in the presentation, making him the most-quoted individual in the training slideshow. Other quotes in the slideshow were attributed to figures including Confederate General Robert E. Lee, former President George Bush, former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Batman.
As the Louisville Courier-Journal reporter, the reason for Brewer's resignation was not made available. Morgan Hall, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet, which oversees the KSP, confirmed to Insider on Tuesday his resignation.
"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 when asked if Brewer's resignation was connected to the Manual RedEye report.
"There is no rationale or reason that is ever OK," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said of the KSP presentation at a Monday news conference, calling it "absolutely and totally unacceptable."
Beshear said Monday that it appeared the material was used one time during one class in 2013, but that the state was conducting a review of the materials used to train police officers.
"We're not going to rest until we fix this, so we are going to continue to work to rectify, again, something that is absolutely wrong and unacceptable," Beshear said.