Cole Tomas Allen’s attempt to murder the president at the Washington media dinner has suddenly put Torrance – and everyone who ever wore a badge there – in the national spotlight. As someone who spent his entire law enforcement career serving in the City of Torrance, I feel this case in a uniquely personal way, not because I knew Allen, but because I know the streets, the neighborhoods, and the community where he lived.
From what has been reported so far, the 31‑year‑old suspect in the shooting that disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner appears to be what many would consider a “regular guy”: educated, employed as a tutor, living in a normal neighborhood, without the kind of obvious public trail that usually signals a looming act of violence. He reportedly traveled across the country, checked into the Washington Hilton in advance, and arrived armed and prepared to do as much damage as possible.
Those of us who have served in Torrance understand how easily a story like this can be sensationalized. Torrance is suddenly a “data point” in a national narrative, yet for decades it has simply been the place where officers quietly answered calls, wrote reports, knocked on doors, and tried to hold the line against the worst impulses of the human heart. That’s why this case is so unsettling: it reminds us that even in cities we know well – even in cities we love – evil can emerge from the life of someone who, from a distance, looks relatively normal. That’s why this case is so unsettling: it reminds us that even in cities we know well - even in cities we love - evil can emerge from the life of someone who, from a distance, looks relatively normal. Share on X
If you spend any time in law enforcement, you quickly discover that people are rarely as simple as they appear on the surface. After events like this, neighbors are often shocked. Family members are caught off guard. Coworkers say, “I never thought he was capable of this.” Yet repeatedly, officers stand in the tension between the public face and the private heart.
The Bible has a robust, unflinching description of this reality. Scripture teaches that all of us are marked by what theologians call the “fallen nature” of humanity. Paul writes that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and a few verses earlier he quotes the Psalms: “There is none righteous, not even one… there is none who does good, there is not even one” (Romans 3:10–12). That’s not hyperbole; it’s a diagnosis.
Jesus goes even further by locating the source of our behavior in the interior life rather than the exterior appearance. He says that “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slanders” (Matthew 15:19). We like to imagine that murderers are a different category of human altogether, but Jesus won’t let us off that easily.
The seeds of horrific behavior live in the soil of every human heart.
Some of us water those seeds, some of us restrain them, but none of us are born without them. As a cop (and as a Christian), this explains what I saw repeatedly in my career: the gap between the respectable “public version” of a person and the hidden motives, desires, and resentments that eventually leak out in a moment of decision.
Law enforcement doesn’t create that gap; it simply exposes it.
Whatever specific motives eventually surface in Allen’s case, we already know this much: he chose to act outside the very structures God designed to restrain evil and resolve conflict. Instead of appealing to law, process, or peaceful means of change, he took up weapons and attempted to impose his will by force. That decision is not just a breach of public safety; it’s a theological statement about who gets to define justice.
Romans 13 reminds us that governing authorities are “established by God” and that they “do not bear the sword for nothing” but are “a servant of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil” (Romans 13:1–4). Civil authority is not perfect – far from it – but it is one of the ways God holds our fallen nature in check. When any of us (suspect, citizen, and especially officer) decides to bypass those structures and execute our own version of justice, we are stepping into territory God has not granted us.
For officers, this cuts close to home. Every shift is a battle not only against the evil “out there,” but also against the temptation to let our own anger, frustration, or cynicism drive our decisions. The badge does not exempt us from the fallen nature; it simply gives us a unique responsibility to resist it. Our job is to insist that truth, evidence, law, and due process – not rage, revenge, or political passion – determine outcomes.
It would be easy, in the wake of an event like this, to point at Torrance and say, “What went wrong there?” or to point at Allen and say, “I could never do something like that.” But a biblical view of human nature pushes us to a more uncomfortable – and more honest – conclusion. The problem is not a single city or a single man; the problem is the universal condition of the human heart. Torrance is not uniquely broken; it is typically human. The suspect here is simply a tragic example of what any heart, unrestrained and untethered to God, can become.
For those who wear the uniform – and for those who don’t – the only sane response is humility, repentance, and dependence on the One who alone can give us a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26). We can strengthen policies, improve training, and harden targets (and we should), but unless the human heart is transformed, the capacity for horrific evil will remain. Events like this are a painful reminder that our deepest problem has always been spiritual, and that our only ultimate hope is not in a city, a system, or a leader, but in a Savior who tells us the truth about ourselves and then offers to make us new.
If you haven’t yet thought embraced the Savior who knows and forgive our sinful nature, there is no better time than now to start life anew and share God’s life-changing message with others. The wisdom, guidance, and protection of God is available for anyone who seeks Him.