Page Title: The Thin Blue Line Flag

The flags for sale are down below, but first I want you to understand something about the flag's meaning.

Some people are twisting the honorable meaning of this flag. Don't let them scare you.

1/27/22 The New York Post reports that NYPD received a call from a mother "needing help with her son." Officers arrive. They speak with the mother. Two of them walk down a long very narrow hallway to a bedroom. A door swings open. Bam! Bam! Bam! The son opens fire. Both officers, the fourth and fifth to be shot in New York City in three weeks will die. The son is mortally wounded by a third officer.

The official photos of the two officers are heartbreaking. Two beautiful young guys in their twenties, smiling with pride in their blue uniforms. Guys you wished lived next door to you. Now their short good lives are over. They did not ask to be there that night. A civilian called for help. We sent them there. All of us. We sent them there. They went there to protect and to serve.

The 22 year old officer leaves behind a young widow. They had known each other since about the third grade and were married only three months ago. They were high school sweethearts. She posts on Instagram:  "Mi media naranja (my half-orange) like my mother in law used to call him, left me feeling so empty...I love you so much mi pollito (little chick) in heaven. See you later....Eternal love, live through me."

The photos she posts will break your heart. Two very very young people. They beam with happiness- their prom, their wedding day, at home, entwined. Just look at them, in bliss just to be holding each other. To most of us they are kids really. But he had a very adult job that can go from boring to deadly in the instant it takes to pull a trigger. Now she is without him.

"Live through me." She spoke those words at the funeral.

Can't we do better than this?

This flag has a simple message. This flag means that you appreciate what our good police officers do for us every day. This flag means you care about them and their families. Police officers come in all colors and from all backgrounds. They place their lives on the line every time they put on the badge and go to work.

The term "thin blue line" referring to police has been used since at least the 1950s in the LAPD and in the 1960s in a Massachusetts State government pamphlet regarding its state police. In 1988 there was a documentary film titled "The Thin Blue Line" about the murder of a Dallas police officer.

Police officers world wide do a dangerous and stressful job.

This flag means that you are concerned for the safety of police of every color.

Deval Patrick, presidential candidate and former governor of Massachusetts, puts it nicely:

"We don't have to hate police to believe that black lives matter."

This flag is not the "Blue Lives Matter" flag. It is the Thin Blue Line Flag. It is not meant as an in your face comeback response to Black Lives Matter. They do. And some of those black lives wear blue. The symbolism intended here is that law abiding people are separated from people who will harm us only by the thin blue line of law enforcement people who willingly place themselves in the middle.

If you think that is a bad message, friend you have it all wrong. Think again.

Show police and their families that you care about our officers. Show your support for our police with Police Department and Law Enforcement Flags

I hope that whenever our police and their families see these flags, they take some measure of comfort in knowing that we, the protected, have them in our thoughts.

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