Bishop issues call for prayer after Baton Rouge bloodshed
July 18, 2016
Mildred Rodrigue
July 19, 2016
The murder of three Baton Rouge police officers and wounding of three others Sunday has cut a hole in the heart of the Bayou Region, where law enforcement officials are reviewing security procedures and a major spiritual leader has issued an unprecedented call for soul-searching and prayer.
Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux Bishop Shelton Fabre called for all churches to hold a special daily hour of prayer against violence for the next two weeks, and for all people of faith to pray, whether at home or church, toward the same end.
“Even though our tears are still falling and our fresh and fervent prayers are still ascending to God for the victims and families of the recent violence and loss of life that has gripped our state, our nation and our world, we again today stand before more violence and loss of life in Baton Rouge, which is very close to home for us,” said Fabre, a native of New Roads who served as a priest in Baton Rouge for 17 years.
(READ BISHOP FABRE’S FULL STATEMENT BY CLICKING HERE.)
Houma Police Chief Dana Coleman is among law enforcement executives to place officers on a heightened state of alert, both on and off duty, in the face of the second major assault on uniformed officers this month.
“Officer safety is the key,” Coleman said. “There is an intensified emphasis on officer safety both on and off the job. They have to look out for each other.”
Federal, state and local officials, meanwhile seek clues to the motives of the man believed to be the gunman, who was killed by officers Sunday. Various media reports have identified him as Gavin Long, an ex-marine who most recently lived in Kansas City, Mo., and traveled to Baton Rouge from Dallas after five of that city’s officers were slain by a sniper July 7. A self-described pod-caster and life coach whom media outlets say served in Iraq when he was with the Marine Corps, Long left videos including a seven minute rant recorded in a Dallas hotel room.
(That video can be viewed in its entirety by clicking HERE.)
The video, which praises slain Black Muslim leader Malcolm X and Nat Turner, leader of a bloody 1831 Virginia slave revolt.
State and parish officials said police had killed the gunman, who was dressed in black, wearing a mask and armed with an assault rifle, near Airport and Old Hammond highways, where police had responded to a report of a man with a rifle.
Baton Rouge officers Montrell Jackson and Matthew Gerald were slain, as was East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office Deputy Brad Garafola.
The incident comes amid a national debate over police shootings of black men, including the July 5 killing of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, later the scene of numerous protests and marches, and of another man July 6 in the Minneapolis area.
In Terrebonne and Lafourche police officers were already concerned during debate over the Baton Rouge and Minnesota incidents, an even more so after the Dallas massacre.
Sunday’s Baton Rouge killings, however, have brought concern to new levels.
Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said he has already scheduled a meeting with senior staff members to analyze officer safety and security.
“We are going to look at response strategies both off duty and on duty,” Webre said. “We need to look at a myriad of issues and make some recommendations and maybe dictate some new polices. We don’t want to rush to judgement and we don’t want to knee jerk, but we want to ensure out people in law enforcement that we are doing everything we can humanly do to make them safe.”
Webre said he and his officers are not seeing the resentment and anger that have been noted in other jurisdictions nationally, and other local law enforcement executive agree. But all say reviews to ensure safety at this point is advisable.
“We are not feeling effects of isolation, alienation, distrust or contempt,” Webre said. “We are seeing the exact opposite.”
In Lafourche and Terrebonne officers have been gifted with boxes of donuts, meals and even medals bearing the likeness of St. Michael the Archangel, the legendary protector of police officers.
During a parish-wide can-shake effort by officers Saturday in Lafourche to benefit families of the slain Dallas officers, Webre said, people not only gave cash but also thumbs-up and they honked horns in support of law enforcement. National news programs and even some local press coverage of issues surrounding shootings of black men by police have, according to some in law enforcement, been too prone to condemn officers in questionable cases. Some have suggested that hyperbole and rhetoric have fueled violence such as that seen in Baton Rouge and Dallas.
“You’re damned right I am angry,” Larpenter said. “I was in church this morning and the word was to preach God all around, but how can you share God with people with hate in their hearts that want to kill people?”
“The media is to blame,” said Larpenter. “We don’t even know the truth of what’s going to happen with this Alton Sterling case. There was an article this morning that said Alton Sterling was murdered. Let’s wait till the Justice Department clears or charges those two police officers.”
Bishop Fabre’s statement, while addressing the tragedy of the law enforcement lives lost, also noted elements of the debate.
“Where there is justice, there is peace,” the bishop’s statement reads. “Where there is injustice there will always be the temptation to violence. God calls us all to ‘see’ others as He ‘sees’ them. As Pope Francis has indicated, we must truly seek to ‘encounter’ those who are racially or ethnically different from us in a real effort to appreciate the countless gifts that unite us, and to seek to address and to solve the problems that challenge and seek to divide us, complicating our lives together. When we learn to ‘see people with the eyes of the Lord, we will then move forward in justice and peace.”
