LAPD Chief Blasted For “Political Pandering” After Banning ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Flag From Los Angeles Police Stations

Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,

So Los Angeles has a new mayor — the far-left Karen Bass, and it hasn’t taken long for changes to kick in, letting the police know she doesn’t have their back.

Latest news is this diktat from above, as reported by Fox News:

The Los Angeles Police Department banned the Thin Blue Line flag from public areas within police departments this week over a complaint that the flag represented “violent, extremist views.”

LAPD Chief Michel Moore defended the controversial move in an email sent to Fox News Digital, saying, “Yesterday, we received a community complaint of the presence of a Blue Line Flag” with “the view that it symbolized support for violent extremist views, such as those represented by the Proud Boys and others.” 

“I directed to have the item taken down from the public lobby. The U.S. flag should be proudly displayed in our lobbies whenever possible. Memorials for our fallen are also authorized in all public spaces,” he said. 

The banned flag looks like this:

Where’d I take that photo? At a party full of LAPD cops, celebrating the birthday at the home of one of their own. The photo doesn’t include the cops, but there were a lot of them. 

It was at this party that I learned how much that flag means to these officers, all of whom were black or Hispanic, none of whom were white. This flag is a big deal to them, an emblem of their hard job, an expression of the dangers and death they face, and a rallying point for their reasonable interests.

They want to ban this? Because of one wokester complaint, a complaint from someone who undoubtedly doesn’t want any cops whatsoever, a cop-hater, and they are out there, as that’s been the party line in the anti-cop wokester-activist community for several years now.

The excuses from headquarters were really pathetic:

Moore explained that a flag displayed in one station’s lobby spurred a complaint and he added, “It’s unfortunate that extremist groups have hijacked the use of the ‘Thin Blue Line flag’ to symbolize their undemocratic, racist, and bigoted views.” 

The LAPD chief ordered all flags with the symbol to be removed from public areas. Moore said officers still can display the flag “their workspace, locker door, or personal vehicle.” 

While Moore said he viewed the flag as symbolizing “the honor, valor, dedication, and sacrifice of law enforcement to protect our communities,” he said others had undermined the flag with their “racist, bigoted and oppressive values.”

Really? Let’s hear some names, which naturally, Moore and his ilk didn’t give.

This has about as much credibility as the Pentagon’s hunt for extremists (read: Trump supporters) in the military’s ranks, or the FBI’s hunt for domestic terrorists among the parents attending school board meetings.

And while we are at it, let’s look at the diversity composition of the LAPD these days since policing is so synonymous with white supremacy and that flag the LAPD brass hates so much.

According to Wikipedia:

As of 2019, the Los Angeles Police Department had 10,008 officers sworn in. Of these, 81% (8,158) were male and 19% (1,850) female. The racial/ethnic breakdown:[50]

• 48.8% or 4,882 was Hispanic/Latino (of any race)

• 30.9% or 3,090 was non-Hispanic White

• 9.62% or 962 was African American

• 7.66% or 766 was Asian

• 2.46% or 246 was Filipino American

• remaining were Indian and Other Ethnicities.

The claim that flag was white supremacist, accompanied by the dog biscuit thrown to the cops, that they can still display the flags on their personal cars and lockers, pretty well pegs any cop who has such stickers as a white supremacist. After all, if they’re going to peg a symbol as white supremacist, why are they allowing it on lockers and cars? Do they allow Klan or White Aryan Brotherhood symbols on cars and lockers of cops, too?

Don’t think so.

The concession given is because they know how alienated the cops are by this decision. According to Fox News, a union representing 9,900 Los Angeles police officers fire back with this statement:

“It is difficult to express the level of utter disgust and disappointment with Chief Moore’s politically pandering directive to remove Thin Blue Line flags and memorials for fallen officers from all public areas within our police stations. This direction came as a result of complaints from anti-police, criminal apologists, and activists who hold too much sway over our city leaders and, unfortunately, our Chief,” the Board of directors for the Los Angeles Police Protective League wrote in a statement.

The union said they “vehemently” opposed “this disrespectful and defeatist kowtowing by our department leadership to groups that praise the killing of police officers and outright call for violence against those of us in uniform. We have directly expressed our outrage to the Chief.”

Note that word “vehemently.” 

We pretty well can tell what the sentiment in the not-so-white ranks is regarding this ban on the only public emblem the cops even have — and which without, they are all alone out there, no rallying symbol for their lives and welfare.

With the police brass playing politics, as they say, it’s pretty obvious that the “politics” here is the politics of the new mayor, Karen Bass, who’s a wokester fanatic so leftwing she was rejected by the Biden team for the vice presidency, which handed the slot of the giggly and less competent Kamala Harris instead. Obviously, they’ve been read the Riot Act by Bass, and are looking to save their skins. The bad part here is that the line officers have been sent a message — that politicians and the police brass don’t have their backs now. Already thousands of officers, including many at that very party, have retired, or retired at their desks.

This flag message sends the message in the already crime-plagued city, one of the country’s worst, that it’s time to quit and move someplace where they want the blue in place and are willing to support the blue.