LAPD chief bans pro-police flag as tool for extremists
Tori Richards
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Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore has banned the public display of the pro-police “thin blue line” flag, saying it has been hijacked by racist extremists.
The move has created a backlash from law enforcement, which sees Moore catering to special interests rather than defending more than 9,000 officers under his command, Fox News reported.
“That blue line is the only thing that’s separating the darkness and the chaos,” said Joseph Imperatrice, founder of Blue Lives Matter NYC. “So every once in a while it is nice or would be nice, as an executive at a police department around the nation, just stood up and just explained it a little bit more because morale’s in the gutter.”
Moore, who is appointed by the Los Angeles mayor, has made several changes to the department that his critics say cater to the Left.
One of them was last year when he slashed the budget of the famed Robbery-Homicide Division that was created to investigate the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
The division has gone from 100 detectives before Moore’s tenure down to 10 after Moore took a knee with Black Lives Matter supporters, a former detective told the Washington Examiner.
“We need the community and our executives and all the high brass to stand behind their cops and say, ‘If you go out there and do policing to the best of your ability and don’t do anything criminal and genuinely want to help, the public will stand behind you, but if you do cross that line, we are going to go after you because you need to be held to a higher standard,'” Imperatrice said to Fox News.
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The flag fiasco occurred when a single person complained that it was tied to the Proud Boys and other extremist groups. Moore ruled that the flag could only be displayed on lockers or elsewhere hidden from public view associated with the department.
The move will do little to encourage recruits to join the LAPD, Imperatrice said. Only 22 officers were in the last class, and the department is down about 800 officers. A stipend to help with rent is now being offered by private donors as a way to lure new officers to Los Angeles.
Staffing is down nationwide, and the competition to hire quality candidates is fierce.
Attorney Kisha Hebbon is married to a law enforcement officer and said she understands what the flag means.
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“I knew what that flag represented, and it represented fallen officers,” she told Lawrence Jones. “So I think what’s happening now, because so many people in society are associating it with these races and people who were anti-Black Lives Matter movement, it’s becoming offensive, but I think in respect and honor of those officers and the officers who have lost their coworkers, we should just educate the public about what that flag really means.”