A pro-police “thin blue line” flag was banned from flying during football games at a Florida high school due to it being “political.”
“In consultation with the coaches, I determined that the act of using this flag in this personal way, while in the context of the football game opening ceremony, could easily be construed as representing a political position of our school and not just the personal feelings of the student and his teammates,” Fletcher High School Dean Ledford said in a statement.
A junior offensive lineman began the tradition of flying the “thin blue line” flag in 2019 after his father died following 29 years of working in law enforcement.
“It is all about my son’s love for his dad and his memory,” Lorie Lavender said of her son’s motivation behind featuring the flag.
“He was one of a kind,” Lavender added. “And he is very much missed and loved.”
Some on social media said flying the pro-police flag was “racist,” including one who said, “Fletcher really out here being openly racist,” after a game last week.
The Jacksonville Fraternal Order of Police President Steve Zona slammed the school’s decision to ban the flag, saying the act was never political.
“This is a prime example where it was as innocent as can be, there is no politics involved, no us versus them, simply to honor a great man and allow his kids in the football team to honor him, and they have taken those, hijacked it, and called it racism,” Zona told News4Jax. “And now, the son and these kids are suffering because of it.”
The news comes after two Ohio high school football players were briefly suspended from their team for carrying “thin blue line” and “thin red line” flags ahead of a game on 9/11 in defiance of school officials.
The two students were returned to “active status” on the team after school officials found their motivations behind holding the flags to be apolitical in nature.
“We wanted to carry out flags to honor the first responders who went towards danger instead of running from it 19 years ago, and we were told no,” said Brady Williams, one of the students who was suspended. “We kind of took that to heart, and we still wanted to honor them. And so we did.”
