{"id":10121,"date":"2019-04-16T11:13:55","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T15:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10121"},"modified":"2019-04-16T11:13:55","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T15:13:55","slug":"church-to-have-police-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10121","title":{"rendered":"Church to have police department"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pastors get what they want in the south, and a Presbyterian church in Alabama wants to have its own <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/best-states\/alabama\/articles\/2017-04-11\/alabama-senate-oks-church-police-bill\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">police department<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Alabama Senate has voted to allow a church to form its own police force.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers on Tuesday voted 24-4 to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish a law enforcement department.<\/p>\n<p>The church says it needs its own police officers to keep its school as well as its more than 4,000 person congregation safe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It shouldn&#8217;t need to be said that this has so many problems that the bill should never have even made it to the floor for a vote.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Will the uniforms have sectarian decorations?  Almost certainly.<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Will persons of all religions, or no religion, be eligible for service on this police force?  Not likely.<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Can the public enjoy confidence that crimes within the church will be properly investigated?  No.  After all, the Chief is the pastor, with a reputation to protect.<\/ul>\n<p>This will doubtless be challenged in the courts if the bill passes the Alabama House and a police force is authorized.  Let&#8217;s hope the courts aren&#8217;t as craven as Alabama&#8217;s legislature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pastors get what they want in the south, and a Presbyterian church in Alabama wants to have its own police department. The Alabama Senate has voted to allow a church to form its own police force. Lawmakers on Tuesday voted &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10121\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10121"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10122,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10121\/revisions\/10122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}