Flag flap: Belleville police chief modifies shoulder patch policy

After hearing complaints about a July 7 memo calling for police officers to put the Belleville city police patch on both shoulders as they got new uniforms, Police Chief Bill Clay said Friday he has modified the policy and will let officers decide which shoulder patches they wear on their uniforms: They can use the city flag police patch on one side and the American flag patch on the other side, or they can wear the city patch on both sides.

Clay said officers who choose to use the Belleville Police Department patch on both shoulders, like most police and sheriff departments across the metro-east and nationwide, can still wear an American flag pin on their lapel, an American flag tie clip or an American flag bar on a chest pocket.

The goal of the July 7 policy was to “get some uniformity and symmetry with our uniforms,” Clay said.

But he said there was a lot of the misinformation spreading on the Internet about the policy, and it was “not worth” the fight to keep the July 7 policy in place. Clay said this issue was “not anything to get dug in over,” and he “can’t allow that kind of situation to fester.”

“Unfortunately, some employee(s) of this department chose to release misinformation concerning the policy change to the public resulting in unnecessary criticisms and claims questioning the motives of such a change,” Clay wrote in the second memo, which was released Friday afternoon. He put the words “release misinformation” in bold and they were underlined.

He declined to release the name of the employee or employees he was referring to.

Belleville City Clerk Dallas Cook, who is organizing a “rally to save the American flag in Belleville” at 6 p.m. Monday in front of City Hall at 101 S. Illinois St., said he was glad to hear Clay had changed the policy, but the rally will still be conducted.

“It’s absolutely the right decision to allow our police officers to display proudly the American flag,” said Cook, who sent out a Facebook message about the rally.

“In my opinion there is no excuse for separating the American flag with the Belleville Police Department. I think we all love our Belleville Police Department and we all love the American flag, and I think there is no question that there is no reason to ever separate the two.”

Cook said he will carry on with the rally “just to further show our belief that the American flag has a sense of pride, and many people have given their life or their livelihood to fight for it.”

“So we’ll be out there proudly supporting the American flag regardless of whether or not the city of Belleville has determined that their policy was not appropriate.”

In an interview Friday morning about the July 7 memo, Clay said police departments are proud of their local patches.

“That identifies us. That makes us unique and I like that,” Clay said. “There’s a lot of pride in that.”

He noted that police departments have a tradition of trading department patches. Clay said he hopes to display Belleville’s collection when the department moves to its new headquarters at 720 W. Main St. next year.

Clay estimates that 90 percent of police departments across the country put police department patches on both shoulders or put the patch on one shoulder and nothing on the other shoulder.

He also noted that under the July 7 memo, officers still would have been allowed to wear American flag pins, tie clips or bars.

Detective Chris Mattingly, the police union president, discussed the July 7 memo with Clay beforehand and had signed off on it.

It’s unclear how many police departments have U.S. flag patches on their uniforms. Frank Kaminski, the police chief in Park Ridge near Chicago and president of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, could not be reached to discuss the shoulder patch issue.

Belleville Ward 7 Alderman Phil Elmore said his phone was “blowing up” over the flag issue.

“It was really hard to hear that such a policy was even being discussed for many reasons, one of which that we have such a working relationship with Scott Air Force Base, and I’m glad that cooler heads prevailed and it looks like we will continue to have our American flag on people’s uniforms,” Elmore said.

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 1:35 PM with the headline "Flag flap: Belleville police chief modifies shoulder patch policy."