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. …
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:
(re-ordered)
That seems fair, but was probably too restrictive. They should have banned all kinds of extraneous messaging.
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.).
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