{"id":152,"date":"2016-07-17T21:45:01","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T21:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2019-09-13T18:18:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T18:18:48","slug":"lord-have-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/17\/lord-have-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord, have mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today the unthinkable happened in my city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While\u00a0folks were in church this morning, a gunman lured police officers to a convenience store right around the corner and then ambushed them. At least three officers have been killed responding to the call of duty, a phony call orchestrated to trap them. One of them apparently died trying to rescue a fellow officer who had been shot by this villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A villain who isn&#8217;t even from Baton Rouge; he just came here to kill cops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He thought he had the right because of an incident that happened here a couple of weeks ago and has rightfully inflamed those who want racial equality and justice in our city. But none of those people set up a trap to take these men away from their families. In an alleged response to racial injustice, one of the officers this maniac&nbsp;killed is an African-American man. The hero who lost his life trying to save his brother officer. A brother officer who was not African-American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I lived in this city as a boy, as a college student and now as a middle-aged man. I know this city has problems. I also know that this city has people in it who can solve those problems and are willing to work to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Except a murderer came from outside this city and tried to make things worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God willing, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going to work. Lord, please have mercy on Baton Rouge and send Your peace to our city. I pray that the incidents of July 5 and July 17, 2016 will never be the events that define Baton Rouge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the unthinkable happened in my city. While\u00a0folks were in church this morning, a gunman lured police officers to a convenience store right around the corner and then ambushed them. At least three officers have been killed responding to the call of duty, a phony call orchestrated to trap them. One of them apparently died &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/17\/lord-have-mercy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lord, have mercy<\/span> <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":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532,"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thehalfcenturian.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}