California high school bans pro-police ‘thin blue line’ flag from football games

A school district in California has banned a high school football team from taking to the field with a “thin blue line” flag after backlash.

The use of the pro-police flag in a pre-game ceremony at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita had made some feel “uncomfortable and unwelcome”, said district superintendent Mike Kuhlman per KTLA.

Players for the high school’s Centurions football team had carried the flag onto the field with them to show their support for law enforcement, the outlet reported.

The team’s use of the flag sparked a social media firestorm, prompting discussions between the William S. Hart Union High School District, the high school principal and team coach.

“While many embrace the symbol as simply a celebration of law enforcement, others have shared their feeling that the symbol has sometimes been co-opted by intolerant individuals with an agenda to divide and exclude,” Mr Kuhlman said in a letter to schools, according to KTLA.

Lexi Hawk, the mother of a student who used to carry the flag, said the players and parents had been unaware of the controversy brewing on social media.

“Saying that we’re disrespecting other people is ridiculous,” she told KTLA. “Nobody discussed it. It was not a roundtable discussion, therefore without a discussion, there is no democracy.”

Ms Hawk said some had incorrectly linked the use of the flag to a mass shooting that occurred at the school in 2019.

Despite the ban, several fans waved thin blue line flags at Saugus’s football match on Friday night.

The “thin blue line” flag became a potent pro-law enforcement symbol during Blue Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.

It was criticised as a “symbol of white supremacy”, and akin to a “Confederate flag” by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah in comments to Politico in 2020.