Wisconsin police billboard features officer on leave for shooting 2 people


This week's award for really poor marketing decisions goes to the police association of Kenosha, Wisconsin, whose latest billboard features a local officer, Pablo Torres, who is currently on leave for shooting two people in March. Torres also has a record of nine citizen complaints for inappropriate use of force.
A local paper, the Kenosha News, argued that the billboard should come down while Torres is under investigation, noting that he regularly appears at police events with his police dog, which likewise may unfairly bias public opinion in his favor.
A representative of the family of Aaron Siler, the second shooting victim, also questioned what the billboard was intended to communicate during the ongoing shooting investigation: "What are they trying to say? Are they trying to say he's not guilty and they know that for a fact? Why are they thanking him?"
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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