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The US Department of Justice is stepping into the Confederate flag controversy. The DOJ has issued a memo to all police departments and sheriff’s offices with instructions to remove confederate flags from official logos. Official logos for law enforcement can include symbols found on shoulder patches, badges, ID cards, squad cars, and department letter head.
Police Chief Richard Ewell says he was stunned by the proclamation. “I don’t think the people in Washington know what this will cost me. I have to pay an artist to create the design. Then that design has to rendered for screen printing on shirts, embroidery on patches, etching on badges, and for stickers used to stripe squads. Then all these items need to be manufactured and shipped.”
Every chief and sheriff we talked to said this order would cost them between $10k and $500K depending on the size of the department.
According to Sheriff John Mosby this logo change will be doubly costly for him. “We just re did all the uniforms and squad cars in January of 2015. My logo is only a few months old, now we need to make up a new one. In addition this will be a rush job to meet the DOJ deadline so everyone will charge more to get it done faster.”
Many of the police administrators we talked to questioned when Fire departments and EMS agencies would be forced to also remove the Confederate flag from their logos. “Right now they are just picking on us cops because anti police feelings are in vogue” said Chief Ewell.
CallTheCops does not have a accurate count on the number of police agencies with a Confederate flag in their logo. This change could effect thousands of departments from Virginia to Texas.
