A symbol that has been on Nashville Metropolitan Police Department cars since 2017 has sparked intense discussion in the last two regular town council meetings.
Council member Anna Hofstetter brought up the subject at the Sept. 17 meeting. She asked if the town was going to be leasing a new car, and when told no, said that she wanted to “make sure we have a sense of uniformity.”
“There has been some concern, there’s one car I think that has … the flag with the ‘Blue Lives Matter,’” she began.
“I don’t think that’s what it represents,” said council member Nancy Crocker.
In fact, all Nashville police cars have the image, which police know as the “thin blue line” flag, on their hoods except one, Chief of Police Ben Seastrom said. He said the town council approved the design in 2017 when the department was getting new vehicles.
At that time, Hofstetter and Crocker were not yet on the council; “Buzz” King and former Nashville police officer Arthur Omberg served in their places. Current members David Rudd, Jane Gore and Alisha Gredy also were serving in 2017.
Hofstetter’s argument was that it wasn’t appropriate for a public servant to be “making a statement” by having such an image on their town-owned vehicle. Though the “thin blue line” flag has been around for more than a century as a symbol of officers standing between the people they protect and chaos, Hofstetter said its meaning has changed.
She explained further after the meeting: “As a government figure and representative of the people, I feel very strongly that extra sensitivity needs to be implemented on all public property,” she wrote in an email to the newspaper. “The blue line flag might have originally represented fallen officers — and don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly believe that public safety officials deserve respect; they put their lives on the line to keep us all safe. However … this is now a symbol of unjust racial brutality and oppression. Therefore, it does not belong on public, government-funded property.”
“That’s your opinion,” Rudd said during the meeting. “I have my opinion, which is totally different than your opinion. So, I say we keep them the way they are.”
Hofstetter asked fellow council members: Would it be appropriate for a police vehicle to display a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker?
“I think it’s a totally different subject,” said Gore, the council president.
“Of course it wouldn’t be,” Hofstetter said in response to her own question, “because they are public servants and they are representing the government. It’s inappropriate.”
Crocker said she didn’t know if the public even knew what the flag meant and didn’t know who thought it was offensive, or if people even did. She said she believes the flag represents officers killed in the line of duty.
Hofstetter then brought up the swastika, which was a sacred symbol in several religions for thousands of years before it was adopted by the German Nazi Party.
“That is just terrible that you’re even comparing those things,” Crocker said, before Gore eventually redirected the meeting to another topic.
Hofstetter revived the conversation at the Oct. 15 town council meeting by starting with an apology for anyone she may have offended and affirming her respect for the police department. She said she felt it was important, though, to find a way to honor people who have given their lives to protect others “in a nonoffensive way.”
“You compared the flag to Nazis,” Gredy said. Hofstetter said she didn’t; she was saying that symbols are able to change over time, and that’s what she feels has happened to the thin blue line flag.
Gredy said she’d spoken to several people of color who don’t feel that it’s a symbol of racial oppression; Hofstetter said she had as well, and they do feel that way. As “prominent white people” in positions of authority, Hofstetter said they need to pay attention.
“I’m going to stop you,” Gore said. “You’ve made your statement and I think that probably covers it, and I don’t want to bring this all up again because it’s painful for some to hear.”
Crocker said she felt Hofstetter was bringing her “personal agenda” to the council and she didn’t feel that was appropriate. If people come to the council with a concern, that’s different, she added.
Hofstetter said several people have talked to her about it who don’t want to go on record as saying they’re offended because they don’t want to face backlash.
“I don’t see anything changing with it at this point,” Gore said. “I think there’s enough people in the majority that want to leave it like it is.”
Since the flags appeared on town police cars three years ago, the newspaper has heard from one reader, in March 2019, who asked that the flags be removed.
“Now, I don’t for a minute believe that the Nashville Police Department has a racist agenda,” wrote Jessica Bussert in a letter to the editor. “I call many of the local police my friends and neighbors. They are amazing people who regularly risk their lives for low pay and little respect and THEIR LIVES ABSOLUTELY MATTER! And while I don’t believe that our local law enforcement is racist, I do believe that the administration of our local law enforcement has unknowingly been duped by this masterful misdirection effort.”
Two other letter-writers then responded in defense of this flag.
In recent years, the flag has been adopted by the Blue Lives Matter movement, which launched in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, NPR reported in July. NPR’s story was about firefighters clashing with residents of a Massachusetts town about the flag’s use. The flag also was flown at a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., organized by white supremacists. Because of these associations, “many believe it connotes opposition to the goals of ending police brutality and systemic racism,” NPR reported.
The phrase “thin blue line” also has been associated with the “blue code of silence” for decades. A 2018 paper published by the University California Davis Law Review says that “also well-documented is the code of silence, the thin blue line, which discourages officers from reporting improper and unlawful conduct by fellow officers.”
To Nashville police, it is none of those things, Seastrom said after the October council meeting. They display it in memory of three Nashville officers who died, one in the course of his military service and two others of natural causes. He said they hadn’t heard any comments about it, except for Bussert’s letter, until last month, when the message he heard in the council meeting was a comparison between his police force and Nazis.
Over the years, he said people have called officers Nazis just to try to get a rise out of them, but those didn’t sting the way this one did.
“It’s really just an ugly topic. … We’re being beaten up for something that’s happening nationally that doesn’t have anything at all to do with us. It’s just tough.
“I get it. I really do get it,” he added, about the emotionally charged nature of many topics these days. “There’s a lot of things that happen nationally that are wrong, that we don’t agree with. This isn’t just a blanket ‘I’m going to back every cop in the world,’ because there’s dirty people. There’s dirty people in every job. But it’s just tough.”
A retired Chicago police officer who now lives in Nashville was listening into the Oct. 15 council meeting and asked Hofstetter if she knew the history of the blue line flag and what it represents. When Hofstetter paused to think about her words, Arlene Moffitt answered her own question, tracing the flag’s meaning back to the Crimean War in 1854 when soldiers held back a Russian charge, to the 1950s when it was adopted by law enforcement “to represent courage and sacrifice while protecting the American people.”
“It has nothing to do with BLM. It has nothing to do with offending anybody. It has everything to do with honoring people, our dead, the people who have gone out there and strapped on a gun belt for you,” Moffitt said. “It has nothing to do with your feelings; it has everything we do with what we do to serve you.”
“How dare you take away a flag that honors these people, their wives, their and husbands and their children,” Moffitt said. “That’s disgusting.”
Gore thanked her for her comments. Hofstetter was silent.
After the meeting, Seastrom said that if the symbol was “really, really, really offending people, then we’re going to take a look at it,” but he hadn’t heard from those people. “The people I’m talking to support it,” he said.
