This is from two years ago, though I didn’t see it at the time. Apparently the Blue Lives Matter movement created any number of mind-bogglingly awful logos and graphics, and at least some of them incorporated the stylized skull used as a personal symbol by the fictional Marvel comic and television character The Punisher.

If you don’t already know: The Punisher is not a good guy. He’s a former marine who now treats every crime as an act of war, and responds in kind. It never occurs to him that his wars might not make communities safer, that even if he targets bad guys war on the streets is bad for good guys and bad even for normal, non-noble but non-evil human beings. He is a man of blood and battle, a torturer and a murderer, and the embodiment of all the ideas that good is defined by its hatred of evil, that men are defined violently imposing their will over others, and, of course, that intent is magic. So, naturally, cops in the US think he’s the greatest.

Just check out those cars mentioned in the title:

This Lexington Herald article is about the ultimate removal of the image from the Catlettsburg, Kentucky patrol cars, but make no mistake: they were pressured to remove the skull. The cops didn’t accidentally end up with skulls on their cars, and it wasn’t some low-level employee acting without authorization.

The designs were spearheaded by Police Chief Cameron Logan, who worked with a vinyl decal shop in Louisiana to get the decals printed. Logan installed the decals on all the police vehicles in December. He would not discuss how much the decals cost.

Well, not with the newspaper. However, he did discuss it with the city council and mayor. They, of course, approved spending tax dollars to display a symbol of kidnapping, torture and murder. After all, just like the Punisher’s campaigns of lethal violence, this was okay because it was all to serve such a good cause:

“That design is basically to give back to the police officers,” Logan, who has been with the department for 13 years, said before reversing course on the emblems. “Our lives matter just as much as anybody’s. … I’m not racist or anything like that, I’m not trying to stir anything up like that. I consider it to be a ‘warrior logo.’ Just ’cause it has ‘Blue Lives Matter’ on the hood, all lives matter. That decal represents that we will take any means necessary…

As if “any means necessary” wasn’t scary enough without the skull. One wonders if they even bothered to ask themselves the Mitchell & Webb question that is always relevant when a bunch of guys with guns deck themselves out in skulls.