Georgia: Ten Commandments Removed from Police Department
The Hartwell Sun explains:
"Mike Griffin is a reserve police officer and chaplain to the Hartwell Police Department," [Hartwell City Manager Phil] Hertz said. "To perform those duties, he is trained to know the laws of the city, state and federal government and he is sworn to uphold those laws.He should have known that this could not be done," Hertz said.
In a press release, Griffin said the plaque was not displayed in the public access area of the department but in an administrative hallway and it had been there for six months without any complaints. "The display of the Ten Commandments was totally and completely initiated by the officers themselves," Griffin said. "We believe it is important for the officers - because they deal with these moral issues every day."
So, "thou shalt have no other gods before me" and "thou shalt not make any graven images" are moral issues that police officers deal with every day in Hartwell? I realize that people in Georgia are pretty religious, but Hartwell sounds like a bizarre place even by those standards!
But seriously, I don't actually believe that's going on and neither does Griffin. That's absurd. What's really happening is that Griffin is focusing on just a couple of moral commandments in defense of the plaque, apparently hoping that no one will remember that much of the list is religious in nature and, hence, not something that the government should be promoting.
Like Hertz said, Griffin should have known better... and he probably did. The fact that this didn't stop him not only suggests that he is unfit to hold a position of responsibility in the police department, it also undermines any claim that people need the Ten Commandments to help them be moral. It obviously isn't helping Griffin, is it?
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What you fail to understand, and this is understandable, is that the stress of the job those the chaplain is called to serve is enough to warp one’s view of life. Living in a neighboring county and having undergone a very minor portion of their job, I understand easily what can happen if they don’t have a firm moral base. In essence, if you get too used to seeing bad things every day, those “bad” things become normal, soon enough they blur even into your own life. Therefore, the need of morality and values, be they the Ten Commandments or the Georgia Guidestones, is critical. Unless you want the values of a Sheriff Department to go down the drain. Case in point, Abu Ghirab. The Army chaplain assigned to that unit operating the prison was ordered to stay in the office and not go near the soldiers. We all know what happened then. Afterwards, a large portion of the clean-up was at getting the chaplain out in the midst of the troops. Abu Ghirab has since become a model prison. Why? Because the troops see the representative of morality/religion/God in their midst. They are reminded constantly of the morals and values of “normal” living and they can easily recognize the “bad”.
It’s a simple fact, known from childhood. What goes in, comes out. I’d rather have “Don’t commit murder” and “Don’t lie” be seen in Hartwell deputies than “I’m gonna beat your a** you m*****f*****!” or anything else you see on Cops that the criminals say.
Granted, since this is an atheism page, I’m the “bad guy,” but my intent is for this to be seen from the other side of the coin.