A new report from The American Independent details how Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft released an ad featuring a cop whose training tactics encouraged violence against citizens and were condemned as inappropriate for police training.
Read more below:
The American Independent: Kentucky candidate ad features cop who wrote controversial police training slideshow
By: Josh Israel
Key Points:
-
A new ad released by the campaign of Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft accuses her Republican primary opponent Daniel Cameron of allowing the Biden administration to promote a “woke” diversity agenda. The spot features an endorsement from Col. Alex Payne, a law enforcement official who previously authored “Warrior Values,” a state police training presentation later deemed inappropriate by the state government for being too inflammatory.
-
It shows Payne, the chief deputy sheriff of Bullitt County, in uniform, saying: “Kelly Craft will get us the staff and support that we need. … That’s why I’m supporting Kelly Craft.”
-
In 2020, the Louisville Courier Journal reported that while he was the deputy commissioner of the Kentucky State Police in the late 1990s, Payne had authored the “Warrior Values” training slideshow.
-
According to the Courier Journal, the slideshow included: “There is no more desperate, sacred task on the face of the Earth today than the training of warriors. The concentrated potential to confront evil and defend society in this room of people is incredible. If we had no engineers or no doctors for a generation, it would be difficult. But if we had no warriors, in a single generation we would be both damned and doomed.”
-
The slideshow also contains a version of a quote attributed to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee: “Private and public life are subject to the same rules. Truth and manliness will carry you through the world much better than policy, or tact, or expediency, or any other word that was ever devised to conceal a deviation from a straight line.”
-
The Courier Journal reported that one slide with the title “Violence of Action” said: “Ruthlessness without anger. Able to meet violence with greater violence. Controlled aggression without anger. Be the loving father, spouse, and friend as well as the ruthless killer.”
-
Another said, “If you believe nothing is worth the loss of a man then you set yourself up for failure and create unwillingness to commit to the fight.”
-
Payne told the American Independent Foundation, “I stand by my training and the material I used in it and most importantly within the context it was utilized.”
-
The Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, which oversees the Kentucky State Police and other public safety agencies in the commonwealth, determined the training to be inappropriate in 2020.
-
“This administration does not condone the use of these materials at any time,” spokesperson Morgan Hall told the Courier Journal. “Governor Beshear’s office and the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet continue to swiftly and thoroughly review all training materials, take any corrective action necessary and inform the public.”
-
A Craft campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
Published: Apr 26, 2023 | Last Modified: Apr 28, 2023