Debated flags will stay on Nashville police cars

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The flag design that’s been debated at three monthly town council meetings will stay on Nashville police vehicles after the council took a vote to try to put the matter to rest.

After hearing the opinions of 13 town or county residents at the Nov. 19 meeting, the council voted 3-2 to keep the vehicle hood designs as they are. Jane Gore, Alisha Gredy and David Rudd voted to keep them; Nancy Crocker and Anna Hofstetter voted for removal.

Hofstetter had initiated the discussion at the September meeting. Her argument was that “political symbols” of any kind have no place on government property, and this flag, which police know as the “thin blue line,” over time has developed an association with racial brutality and oppression.

The flag has been around for more than a century as a symbol of officers standing between the people they protect and chaos, and a tribute to those who gave their lives.

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In recent years, it also has been adopted by the Blue Lives Matter movement, which launched in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, NPR reported in July. The flag also was flown at a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., organized by white supremacists.

In addition, the phrase “thin blue line” has been linked with “the code of silence … which discourages officers from reporting improper and unlawful conduct by fellow officers,” according to a paper published by the University California Davis Law Review.

Crocker had originally said that she thought this flag represented officers killed in the line of duty. That was what Nashville Chief of Police Ben Seastrom said the police department’s intent was for choosing the design and having it approved by the council in 2017. (Crocker and Hofstetter were not council members at the time.)

However, after doing more research and hearing from residents, Crocker said she’s learned that it “has another interpretation that gives a completely different impression,” which would not reflect well on the Nashville officers she respects and appreciates so much.

She supports officers if they want to display or wear it on their own property, but displaying it on town property doesn’t send a welcoming message to everyone, she said.

“I don’t want anybody to think badly of my officers, and that’s why I support taking this flag off,” she said. “It is honorable and touching that this department wants some way to commemorate officers of the past. This flag is just not the appropriate way of doing it at this time. It may have been in 2017, but it’s not now.” She offered to work with officers to create a different decal.

Because of rising COVID-19 cases, this three-hour council meeting took place over Zoom, with around 60 people logged in.

Outside the building where the council normally meets, 23 people had gathered in the mostly-darkness to “back the blue.” Local residents, including Quinn Surface, organized the event as a rally to “show support to our law enforcement who are against removing the decal.”

All Nashville Metropolitan Police officers were there except one who had a prior commitment, said Chief Ben Seastrom, who was with them until he left for the council meeting.

A couple residents wore shirts featuring the thin blue line flag; Reva Doliana was wrapped in an American flag scarf and waved an American flag.

“To me, I just don’t understand hearing that “blue lives” are racist, and white lives, or Black lives,” she said, adding that she was raised in a “Black neighborhood” in Bloomington and still calls many friends.

“I just don’t understand why everybody, ‘racism’ all the time,” she said. “I personally think most people, most Americans, are not. And I really support all military and law enforcement.”

Mary Cunningham, who identified herself as a member of the Brown County Second Amendment group, said she initially didn’t know what the design was on the hoods of the police cars. “When I first saw them, I thought, ‘Well, that looks pretty,’” she said. “And then I found out what it was, and, well, they’re supporting their fallen members of the police force and EMTs and everybody else.

“Everything around now has two or three different meanings depending on your mood set and everything else,” she said. “So, I think, just like anything, we should be able to have flags of any kind.”

The September meeting was the first public discussion that had taken place about this flag design besides a brief volley of letters to the editor in the spring of 2019. Jessica Bussert, a former neighbor of Seastrom’s, had expressed concern about the symbol then, and she logged on to this council meeting to explain her position further.

She reinforced her respect for local police, and said she’d had respectful conversations with officers to learn their intent with this flag design, but she remained concerned that it “sends the wrong message.”

She suggested that a different symbol be used, like “the original thin blue line flag” which is different from this one, or an officer’s badge with a black band around it. Those bands are worn to mourn fallen officers.

Surface told the council he would be in favor of the thin blue line decals being removed, but only if they were replaced with bigger versions of them. He offered to pay for that work. He thought they should be “easily seen by the public, to ensure everyone’s awareness that we support our police and ensure our town visitors know they are safe in our town.”

He said the belief that this flag was a “symbol of hate” was “completely ridiculous.” “If you’re afraid of the police,” he added, “you’re doing something wrong is the bottom line, and that’s not the kind of people we’d want in our town anyway.”

Surface also told Hofstetter that she wasn’t representing the people who elected her, before Gore cut in and asked him to “stick to the facts.”

Judy East said Hofstetter was representing her. In the 10 years she’s lived here, East said she’s had nothing but positive contacts with local police and always appreciates their help and care, but she believes the symbolism of this flag has changed recently. She said she associates it with the violence we saw over the summer in Portland “and the white supremacists there.”

Not counting any town employees, eight people spoke against the symbol staying on the cars and four spoke for it, and one other encouraged everyone to come together to try to understand each other’s perspectives instead attacking each other. More participants traded arguments on the Zoom chat while others were speaking.

Pastor Mary Cartwright of Nashville United Methodist Church said the church would be willing to fund training for government officials about “implicit bias,” attitudes people have about people of different races without even knowing it. Council members did not talk about this offer beyond this mention.

Council member Gredy, reading from someone’s chat comment, said that if the council did decide to adopt a different symbol, who’s to say that next year, that one might become offensive, too? Gore also mentioned that point.

“After much thought, research and feedback, I support keeping that symbol on the cars at this time. That’s all I have to say,” Gredy said.

Council member Rudd said he’d never heard from this many people about any issue in his 20 years in county and town government. “I do what the people who elected me want me to do, so that’s how I will be voting,” he said.

“But the second question is, you know, does the town have any more important business to do other than this crap? That’s all I have heard.”

Gore agreed that the council needed to shift focus to other things, like the pandemic. She said she also had listened to both sides, and “what I’m seeing is there are more in favor of leaving it on the cars than taking it off, and that is absolutely my opinion.”

After the vote, Hofstetter said she was “totally content with the council’s decision, since it was reached democratically and “it is what it is.”

“I just want to again, yet again, reiterate that I have the utmost respect for our police department and that was never in question,” she said.

A person in the meeting chat had made reference to a photo that Hofstetter had posted publicly on her Facebook page the day before. It showed her holding a children’s cap gun, wearing a costume mask with a police badge sticker on the forehead.

This particular mask was worn in the movie, “V for Vendetta,” in which the title character mobilizes the people to topple a police state. It also has been worn by members of the hacker group Anonymous, whose many diverse targets have included the federal reserve, child predators, multiple countries’ governments, the Church of Scientology, President Donald Trump, and police in several communities after the fatal shootings of Black men.

Hofstetter said the photo was only up for about 24 hours, and she took it down after a couple people reached out to her. She said she didn’t want it to get blown out of proportion, and she wasn’t exactly sure what she meant to communicate with it.

“I think the mask represents something different to everybody,” she said.

“I guess, in that moment, it just seemed ironic and funny. And I took it down so I wouldn’t unintentionally hurt people.”

“I guess, if anything, I was probably trying to make the statement of ‘stand up for what you believe in,’ I guess,” she said. “I think people can interpret that however they want.”

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