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It's a hate flag, no less than the Confederate or Nazi flags, but they're allowed too — in your window at home, or on the bumper of your personal car.

This, though, is vile —

… Tensions began when the Springfield Township Police Department incorporated the “thin blue line” flag into its official logo in 2021. ...

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[-] GreenMario@lemm.ee 41 points 1 year ago

Just need to make it shameful to fly it. Spam the internet with "patriotic" posts about our flag is Red, white and blue. Give people shit that their flag is disrespectful to our troops since the red signifies the blood of our armed forces that protect us. Make it the equivalent of kneeling for a flag.

[-] ohlaph@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

And start calling theirs a quilt.

[-] jopepa@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Pigs in a blanket

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago

Trying to shame authoritarians into doing anything is always a losing strategy. They're not capable of shame because they're not capable of seeing themselves as doing anything wrong.

[-] GreenMario@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Make em think it's gay then. Next pride parade should reappropriate it as a American LGBT Unity flag. They'll run, not walk, to the nearest fire to burn all their flags/decals/shirts.

[-] Thranduil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Or mass adopt it for another purpose to drown out theirs

[-] GreenMario@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago
[-] Thranduil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago
[-] Xariphon@kbin.social 34 points 1 year ago

It's absolutely a hate flag. It represents their support for police brutality and outright murder. Little more than a gang sign.

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

And it's not even as bad as the fucking Punisher skull. "But why skulls, though?"

[-] Xariphon@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago
[-] AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Any cop that sports the punisher skull has absolutely no place in law enforcement. Those cops either never read the comics or watched the movie, or they did and they have the reading comprehension of an acorn.

[-] SwiggitySwole@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

They're doing it because they want to copy Chris Kyle (American Sniper, child murderer)

[-] klemptor@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago

Springfield Twp is largely progressive, I hadn't even noticed that our police had added the thin blue line to their logo. This doesn't represent the majority of people here, just the cops, whose biggest on-the-job risk is that someone might get in line ahead of them at Wawa.

[-] DougHolland@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure the majority wouldn't agree with what that flag stands for if they knew. If it's part of the official police department logo, though, it represents everyone in town.

[-] Krauerking@lemy.lol 26 points 1 year ago

You know we probably should have all see this coming when we told cops that they literally didn't need to serve communities and that their job was not to protect it even enforce laws equally but to make money.

All cops are now just 9-5ers with the right to use guns against people they dislike dealing with. Like a gas station employee with the right to kill.

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 6 points 1 year ago

Like a gas station employee with the right to kill.

That would be fun.

[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

honestly since we're just handing out licenses to kill we should give them to wait staff at restaurants and retail employees. Not the managers just the employees.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
[-] mercury 18 points 1 year ago

I don't think we should ban flags

[-] DougHolland@lemmy.world 56 points 1 year ago

I think we should ban hate flags on government logos and stationery.

[-] mercury 1 points 1 year ago

I agree, my fault for not actually reading the article

[-] kick_out_the_jams@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Headline could be misleading, but it was a ban on police and municipal employees not private citizens.

Tensions began when the Springfield Township Police Department incorporated the “thin blue line” flag into its official logo in 2021.

Springfield Township officials banned its employees from displaying the flag on township property in January, saying that the flag had become central to tensions between marginalized communities and law enforcement, and adding that it had been adopted by white nationalists since its introduction.

Springfield officers displayed variations of the flag on pins, clothing, bumper stickers, and other personal items — even on rubber replacement wedding rings, according to the lawsuit. They also displayed the flag at department events, which took place on township property.

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[-] Assman@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago

I live in a Midwest city of 2 million people, and almost all of our police cars have a thin blue line sticker.

[-] DougHolland@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago
[-] MenKlash@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

Believing that banning a piece of fabric will stop police oppression is, ironically, encouraging such oppression by coercively violating the right to private property and freedom of expression.

[-] Hobo@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

From the article:

Springfield Township officials banned its employees from displaying the flag on township property in January...

It has nothing to do with private property. I think it might be a slight bit fucked to walk into a Township courthouse and have the secretary flying a Nazi or Confederate flag. This is really no different. It certainly would deter me if I wanted to report excessive force if half the township was flying a flag that basically signaled that they believe the police no matter what. I don't see how banning the display as a public employee, at the place where you work as a public employee, is infringing on anyone's privately held freedom of expression.

[-] tory@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

See you're completely correct, and there's literally no coherent argument against your point. How the fuck do we have federal judges who come to other conclusions?

[-] LesserAbe@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Suppose police officers on duty were flying a flag with the burger king logo? Wouldn't the town be justified in prohibiting it? They can fly whatever they want on their own time and property, but not with public money.

Now what if they were flying a Republican flag while on duty? Not saying they're the same, but the thin blue line flag is political in nature, and it's inappropriate for an officer on duty to be advocating for political positions.

[-] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago
  1. acquire a thin blue line flag
  2. take a shit on it.
  3. photograph and share
[-] Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 year ago

Aquire is the important word here. Don't give money to anybody who makes the white supremacy flags.

[-] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago
[-] Cannacheques@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

Draw some art on it lol

[-] tory@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

What you put on public property isn't free speech, what the fuck? God our system of justice is so fucking broken.

[-] ohlaph@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

I feel like this is because it's essentially a poster. It's not a real flag, it's a poster for losers. I actually prefer to allow it so I know who the window lickers are.

[-] memfree@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

In general, I am happy to give people the right to express themselves in awful ways because it is supposed to mean that everyone's free speech is protected, but this isn't quite as easy:

Springfield’s commissioners voted, 5-2, to ban the flag’s display by any township employee who was on duty, as well as on township property and vehicles.

(re-ordered)

... saying that the flag had become central to tensions between marginalized communities and law enforcement, and adding that it had been adopted by white nationalists since its introduction.

That seems fair, but was probably too restrictive. They should have banned all kinds of extraneous messaging.

District Judge Karen Marston wrote in Monday’s ruling that the Springfield’s ban was an “unconstitutional restriction on employee speech under the First Amendment,” which “protects speech even when it is considered ‘offensive.’”

This sort of thing generally escalates and gets picky -- down to "you must wear your uniform and nothing else" and then they get exceptions for wedding rings, crosses, hair bands, glasses, jewelry, and then people wear pins of the 'banned' item but since it is jewelry it becomes hard to argue that certain jewelry is OK but some isn't.

They should still be able to completely disallow 'defacing' of their public propert (vehicles, etc.).

[-] Cannacheques@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Practically an antisocial gang symbol, yet ironically as you would expect, with little wars and starvation going on people find new reasons to get angry

[-] Psionicsickness@reddthat.com 7 points 1 year ago

It’s a hate flag, no less than the Confederate or Nazi flags

This is why people don’t take this shit serious.

[-] the_q@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago
[-] CatTrickery@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Jesus! I just made the mistake of looking at that guy's comment history. Someone is an edgy boi 😬

[-] the_q@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Careful not to cut yourself on in my razor edges.

[-] CatTrickery@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I mean the bootlicking nazi loser at the root of this comment chain

[-] tory@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

You'll notice you're at -10 and dropping.

Is that at all an indicator that you might be incorrect? Or is the whole world full of clowns graced by your intellect?

[-] Psionicsickness@reddthat.com 4 points 1 year ago

Popularity isn’t an indicator of correctness, especially popularity in an echo chamber like lemmy.

Fuck a cop, but conflating everything you disagree with with Nazism is lazy and immediately dismissed by most normal, rational people.

[-] tory@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Popularity isn’t an indicator of correctness

In this, and the vast majority of other situations: it literally is. Especially when your fallback is an appeal to how our average compatriot would react. How do you not make that connection?

[-] barooboodoo@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Popularity isn't an indicator of correctness, so why should we care what most "normal rational people" think?

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

I've never understood why some people are so proud of being the thin blue line that divides the USA

[-] KredeSeraf@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I guess boot leather is just that delicious.

this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
185 points (100.0% liked)

THE POLICE PROBLEM

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    The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.

    99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.

    When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.

    When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."

    When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.

    Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.

    The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.

    All this is a path to a police state.

    In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.

    Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.

    That's the solution.

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