The 'Thin Blue Line': How a simple phrase became a controversial symbol of the police
by Eileen Coop Eileen CoopIt was flown at Trump campaign rallies, at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and worn as face masks by officers policing the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
The flag was also used to show support and mourn the deaths of five Dallas police officers who were ambushed by a gunman in 2016.
Most recently, the "Thin Blue
Line" flag was seen at the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol
building in January.
The imagery of a single blue line on a black-and-white American
flag — inspired by the phrase "Thin Blue Line" — has sparked a
fiery debate over the role of police and law enforcement.
Tom Nolan, associate professor of
sociology at Emmanuel College who previously worked with the Boston Police
Department, said the "Thin Blue Line" fosters an "us against
them" mentality, in which "the police firmly believed that they are,
in fact, the metaphorical and literal 'Thin Blue Line' between order and
anarchy, between the good guys and the bad guys."
"I think when I was on the job, I might've actually
espoused this belief myself because when you're immersed deeply in the
subculture of policing, which most police officers are, this is how you see the
world," Nolan told Insider.
Read : 3 Interesting Points Before You Raise A Blue Line Banner
Nolan, who has nearly 30 years of
experience in law enforcement, said the controversy that follows the flag is
rooted in the "construct" built by police officers "that there
is this kind of schism between the good guys and the bad guys."
"The police feel threatened
because their role as being the good guys and their supporters of being the
good guys is being questioned," he said.
Here's how the simple phrase of
the "Thin Blue Line" came to be wrought with so much controversy:
Dating back to the 1850s, the "Thin Blue
Line" was originally red. In the book "Lawtalk: The Unknown
Stories Behind Familiar Legal Expressions," co-authors Elizabeth Thornburg
and James Clapp wrote that the original phrase was coined during the Crimean
War, referring to the red-coated British army.
The phrase "caught on with a
public always receptive to romantic images of war, and thin red line —
sometimes with 'of heroes' added for good measure — became a rhetorical
appellation for the British army and British military might and grit
generally," they wrote.
The phrase had also morphed
through an assortment of colors throughout the remainder of the century —
including a "thin red line of freemasons in crimson collars, a thin white
line of bishops, a 'thin blue line' of public schoolboys in blazers and straw
hats, [and] a thin brown line of Egyptian soldiers (a reference to skin
color)," according to the book.
In the US, the phrase slowly began
to take hold after occasionally being used to reference "blue-clad
military troops."
More recently, the phrase became
commonplace to refer to police forces. In 1924, the mayor of Chicago praised
the city's police officers as "a 'thin blue line' between crime and our
three millions of population," according to the book.
The phrase eventually made its way to Los Angeles, notably by
former Los Angeles Police chief William Parker. Parker joined the LAPD in 1927
and became chief in 1950, Thornburg and Clapp wrote, and he "saw the
potential uses of this metaphor, and he exploited them so brilliantly that he
is often erroneously credited with coining the phrase."
"The heroic identity implicit
in 'Thin Blue Line' was just what Parker was after," they wrote.
"Inheriting a department known to be a corrupt, patronage-ridden force,
Parker wanted to transform the police into a professional organization, independent
of politicians, and composed of committed, honest, disciplined officers."
Parker, however, was known for
"unambiguous racism," according to an article from The Marshall Project.
"He said some immigrants were
'not far removed from the wild tribes of Mexico' and compared Black residents
participating in the 1965 Watts Riots — which stemmed in part from anger over
his own department's mistreatment — to 'monkeys in a zoo,'" according to
The Marshall Project.
According to the Marshall Project
article, Parker's tenure from the LAPD prompted a "bigger shift toward
militarism in police departments, which came to buy military gear directly from
the Department of Defense."
In 1988, film director Errol
Morris released a scathing documentary about an innocent man who was arrested
and convicted of murdering a police officer. The man was executed by electric
chair "with the help of suppressed evidence, perjured testimony, and an
emotional closing argument for the prosecution," according to
"Lawtalk."
Ironically, Morris titled the
film, "The Thin Blue Line."
"[The] final argument was one
I had never heard before the thin blue line of police that separated the public
from anarchy," the trial judge said in the film, according to the book.
"And I have to concede that there my eyes kind of welled up when I heard
that."
The "Thin Blue Line" phrase gave shape to the black,
white, and blue American flag near the end of 2015 upon the inception of the
Blue Lives Matter movement.
The Blue Lives Matter movement
emerged as a counter-movement to Black Lives Matter, which was formed in
protest of a string of incidents of police brutality and rallied against
violence by law enforcement.
The Blue Lives Matter movement was
aimed at advocating for law enforcement. Flag creator Andrew Jacob formed the
idea to "give the police a flag to wave" amid the backlash against
police officers in light of the deaths of Black men and boys — Eric Garner,
Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice — at the hands of the police, Jeff Sharlet wrote
in Harper's Magazine.
"The flag has no association
with racism, hatred, bigotry," Jacob, now the president of the Thin Blue
Line USA, told The Marshall Project. "It's a flag to show support for law
enforcement — no politics involved."
The flag, however, has been
adopted by the conservative activists to show solidarity with the police, and
it has also been picked up by far-right extremist groups as well. The flag made
an appearance at the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, which gathered white supremacist groups, including
the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan. The company disavowed the flag's appearance at the
rally.
Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of
the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter, told The Marshall Project last
June that the flag "feels akin to a Confederate flag."
The image was banned by the police chief at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department for officers on duty. Chief
Kristen Roman said in an email to staff in January that the symbol has been
"co-opted" by "extremists."
She wanted to distance the
department from the symbol due to "the fear and mistrust that it currently
evokes for too many in our community," Insider's Kelsey Vlamis reported.
San Francisco Chief of Police Bill
Scott banned officers from wearing face masks
with the flag, expressing concern that it could be perceived as "divisive
and disrespectful" after the masks had been given to officers by the local
police union.
"We did it as a morale
booster for each other, not as a political statement," union president
Tony Montoya wrote in an op-ed for Law Enforcement
Today.
Fletcher High School in
Neptune Beach, Florida, banned the flag from being waved at football games in
September 2020, and a school district in Pelham, New York, prohibited the flag late last year after some students said it
made them feel unsafe
Dallas Police Sgt. Stephen Bishopp defended the flag, saying
that whenever he sees "that flag as a sticker on a car or flying in
someone's yard, I know that there is someone there that knows what I'm going
through."
"They know because they are a
part of the family," Bishopp told The Marshall Project. "I don't
really care if it bothers people or hurts their feelings to see that flag. I
absolutely could care less. I am proud of what I do, the people I work with,
and the ones who have died defending the rights of strangers."
"I will continue to fly that
flag until my very last day," Bishopp added.
Nolan said he experienced this
"sense of solidarity" back during his days on the force, but the
caveat was that it could create animosity between officers and the public,
which could be embodied in the flag.
"We have this sense of
solidarity where no one ever breaks ranks, no one ever speaks out, and we all
protect each other, ... and I expect that I'm going to have my fellow officers
have that they're going to have my back," Nolan told Insider. "And,
you know, that's why the 'Thin Blue Line' is so thin, ... but it has taken
on this kind of menacing, insidious symbol of, 'you're either with us or
against us. And if you're against us, you're the enemy.'"
Michael White, a professor of
criminology at Arizona State University, echoed the sentiment that the flag
could create a divisive nature, noting that "the police and community
together should work together, in order to produce safety."
"Each should respect the role of the other," White told The Marshall Project. "If you're looking at the community as a potential enemy, or a threat, that's certainly going to hinder any positive relationship."
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Created on Apr 15th 2021 06:15. Viewed 434 times.