Reader Aneris sent this video, which you really should watch because it’s unbelievable—even for those familiar with the American Deep South. This is what passes for crime prevention in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana. NOTE: as far as I can see, this is NOT a joke.
Aneris’s note:
You could mistake it for a parody, but it seems to be real. Capt. Higgins appears on the local channel KATC of Arcadiana, Louisiana and addresses the public and its criminals alike. In this episode he reports a burglary of a church; a man who opened “things that belong to Christ” and stole money collected from good Catholics. “Think about what kind of evil passed through him that night” he added. He then demands “Mr Lucifer step away” and addresses the criminal directly, asking him to turn himself in. And all of that while channelling John Wayne himself.
Not only does Higgins have a real gun, but many of the commenters in his videos (see below) see him as God’s gift to law enforcement.
Aneris adds that there are a lot more videos of Capt. Higgins on the KATC channel; and I’ll adds that they are a hoot!
“I’ll be riding a pale horse” – which makes him Death, one of the Four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Is it allowed to threaten suspects with death?
“Threaten”? What you talkin’ ’bout, Dutchie? What do you think he does with that bullet he keeps in his shirt pocket?
He’s going to shoot himself if he sees the burgler? That seems a bit illogical. Then again, we’re talking about Louisiana.
Curiously the “pale” horse comes out “chloral” or a sickly light green in color. Some corpses get that color. In fact we get very colorful as we die then decompose.
Now it it works I would give him kudos for his psychological assault on the criminal’s psyche happened to be right. I don’t think it will though.
…and the horse is Binky?
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Binky would never ride out with this fool.
I liked the story about Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
He left before they got famous.
Just another lovely attraction to living in the south. This is what happens when these positions are elected instead of earned.
To me, this guy is a joke, and from afar I can laugh and enjoy the funny side. To know he’s real makes me understand why you are so much less optimistic about the future of atheism than I am. It must be so hard to live in a community where someone like this is admired.
I’ve often wondered about the US thing of electing so many public officials. This guy is an example of why it’s a stupid idea.
It is good that through the lens, others get to see what we see all the time. Often people who have not lived in the south expect that you exaggerate or make this stuff up.
I have never understood how being a judge can be an elected official but even at the state supreme court level it is so. That may be someone’s idea of democracy but it is just crazy.
In Mass. we follow the John Adams federal model – judges are appointed for life.
Almost all of our officials are appointed. Judges are for life.
I suspect the idea originally was to divorce themselves from the British system where there was a lot of corruption in the appointment of officials, and they thought elections would be better. However, it wasn’t appointment that was the problem, it was who was doing it. Once that was sorted, appointment was better.
By appointed, I mean via a proper process where they have to be qualified for the job etc., and that process is open to scrutiny. Most are appointed via a normal job application process. Politics almost never comes into it.
You couldn’t make it up! I wonder whether the pale horse is also a reference to one of Clint Eastwood early westerns, where he plays the part of a mysterious pastor/gunman who has apparently come back from the dead.
Yeah, that was one of Clint’s worst movies. So he is either death personified, or a zombie.
But this is a manifestation of the culture war our country is going through. He represents the side that thinks the Kentucky clerk is a martyr, and that wants the U.S. to be a christian country.
Oh come on – The Eiger Sanction? Firefox? Now those were bad movies!
Have you seen Pale Rider?
Yeah, Pale Rider? It might not be Josey Wales or Unforgiven or Mystic River, or one of the other jewels of the Clint-wood canon — but it ain’t exactly Every Which Way But Loose or one of the other dregs, either. PR always struck me as a companion piece to High Plains Drifter.
The Pale Horse was one of Agatha Christie’s novels, IIRC. If I remember rightly (after ~30 years), the ‘Pale Horse’ in the title was a ‘kill-for-hire’ organisation and they used thallium as a poison (similar to As, but the regular tests for arsenic wouldn’t show it up).
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Thallium is used as a rat poison.
Hmm. And I’ve always thought those Hollywood depictions of southern law enforcement were parodies.
Two words: Bull Connor.
Wow! The officer says that the perpetrator “left his soul” … and later on he warns that the ‘forensic evidence’ will convict him. I had no idea. Apparently leaving your soul behind isn’t as obvious as dropping a wallet or check book, but there are subtle techniques which still manage to place the soulless criminal behind bars.
I just hope that after over 300 years they’re not really allowing ‘spectral evidence’ back into the courtrooms of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana — but I’m not sure I’d bet against it.
Well, UV light can reveal when, um, one’s essence has been left behind.
I do wonder how they can talk about something, “soul” as if it is real and studied.
Same thing applies to most things theists talk about (when discussing religion).
Pale Horse is a reference to Revelation 6:8 “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”
I got that ; you got that ; other people up-thread think it might also be a reference to an Agatha Christie novel, or a Clint Eastwood movie, both of which refer back to Revelation.
That’s all well and good. But what struck me is that it’s quite likely that the “perp” (or perps?) in this crime simply won’t be well-enough educated to understand the reference. The warning would be greeted with a “what the hell is that dumb ass mo-fo on about?”, or words to similar effect.
I’m now channelling “Jules” in “Pulp Fiction” and his line about the Ezekeil passage being just some shit to fuck people’s heads up with before he killed them. Possibly the the same thinking here. If you can call it thinking.
I brought up Agatha Christie. I wouldn’t suggest that the sheriff had ever read Agatha Christie, though he might have seen Clint Eastwood movies. More likely it’s the Biblical reference he’s quoting.
I found it rather spooky when he was standing by that Virgin Mary and talking to camera.
Which reminds me of an anecdote – when I was young, it used to be fashionable to souvenir signs. Much prized was the ‘Moonshine’ sign near Wellington. Well, one night someone we’ll call Mr X went on a sign hunt, but the sign at the country end of Moonshine Road turned out to be ten feet above ground and secured to a power pole with stainless steel straps – doubtless the AA had prior experience. The sign at the other end of the road turned out to be right by a set of traffic lights on the main Hutt Road. (This was 2a.m.) So, climbing up the traffic lights, Mr X was about to unbolt the sign when he noticed a woman in the garden opposite, quietly watching him. The shock was such that he nearly fell off the traffic lights. But the woman turned out to be a Virgin Mary in a church yard. Sign unbolted, it still wouldn’t shift (stuck to the post with paint), eventually it parted with an ear-splitting crack and Mr X and sign fell to the ground, fortunately without damage.
In all this time no traffic came along – New Zealand really was ‘dead after midnight’ in those times.
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Signs … Rannoch Moor summit. It was Dave, the Mad Irishman Whose Name Should Not Be Mentioned In Full For Fear Of Him Darkening The Doorstep. Again. (to give him his full name) who got the sign, but it was my socket set that “accidentally” went into the minibus 6 hours earlier.
Maybe, but I get the feeling Sheriff Revelation thinks he’s got the might of god on his side and has been deputized as a deliverer of retribution. Or something to that melodramatic effect.
Delusional and armed. What a lovely combination.
As it was a Catholic church, I was kind of hoping that he would point to the big old gruesome crucifix and say, “Just look what these folk did to the last burglar caught around these parts”
In the olden days of a couple decades ago, a southern cop wouldn’t have wasted time investigating problems at a “Papist” church (especially if it was home to nuns or priests sympathetic to the civil rights movement) — he would have kept his indignation powder dry for trouble at a real Christian church. (Hell, in those days, a lot of southern cops were also members of the White Citizens Councils who would have done the vandalizing in the first place.)
In those days, Catholics were only slightly less unwelcome in the South than Jews like Leo Frank or like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
Why didnt jeesuz call 911?
There is, of course, no justifying this type of BS. But I can kinda understand it.
If I were a southern sheriff during the civil-rights era (which is, ok, a counterfactual too far) and some white supremacists had come back to deface the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church after the bombing, I would have probably been unable to stop myself from going on the tube to engage in a similarly stentorian and ridiculous secular rant.
Was it vandalism, or just a straight burglary? I see no evidence of vandalism in the video. Just a burglar (not a very competent one) looking for anything he/she/ze could find.
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