Merriam council votes to remove "thin blue line" flags from city event

Merriam City Council voted 6-2 Monday night to allow only American flags to fly at the city's "Flags 4 Freedom" event

MERRIAM, Kan. -- Merriam City Council voted 6-2 Monday night to allow only American flags to fly at the city's "Flags 4 Freedom" event around the Independence Day holiday beginning this year.

The event was started in 2006 in response to the September 11th attacks by volunteers and was called Healing Fields. Original organizers said Monday the last thing the event was ever supposed to do was divide.

"Deputy Sheriff Patrick Rohrer end of watch June 15 2018 cause gunfire, Deputy Theresa King end of watch June 16 2018, cause of death, gunfire," a tearful Sarah Rohrer said as she read the names of eight fallen Wyandotte and Johnson County deputies and police officers killed in the line of duty since 2016.

For the past six years they've been honored at Merriam's 4th of July event, "Flags 4 Freedom" with "thin blue line" flags bearing the name of each new fallen law enforcement member added to the list.

"It's been five years, 333 days and 3,110,400 minutes since my father's untimely murder," Emma Rohrer, Deputy Patrick Rohrer's daughter, now a high school freshman, said.

Monday the Rohrer family and others spoke out against the plan to remove those flags and only fly approximately 1,200 American flags.

This is the first year the event will be run by the city and not just volunteers.

"This is not what I would do as a City Administrator. I would not come to you and say this should only be about police officers in some hazy ill undefined region," Merriam City Administrator Chris Engels.

Councilman Jason Silvers questioned whether the flags were appropriate for a city-sponsored event in a joint meeting with volunteers last month.

"I fully support the police, our Merriam officers, and I hold deep respect for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. To clarify, I proposed that we return the Flags 4 Freedom display at Merriam Marketplace to its original purpose of honoring all. To achieve this, I recommended relocating the blue line flag to a place of honor in front of the police station, specifically dedicated to those it represents," Silvers said in a statement to FOX4.

In a published information item describing the flag flap Engel said "while the displayed "thin blue line flags" are representative of actual people that have made the ultimate sacrifice, for others, those flags represent something less honorable."

"When I read the words less than honorable in the city of Merriam agenda regarding the flags that die for the officers who died protecting our cities I was not only heartbroken I was disgusted," Rohrer's widow said.

Retired Wyandotte County Sheriff Don Ash, who led the agency at the time of Rohrer and King's deaths says he believes some incorrectly view the flag as racist.

"Follow the truth and do the morally correct thing and keep this celebration that so many people have come to love and appreciate and participate and keep it active here," Ash said.

The city administrator says it's not political, merely an administrative issue. For Emma Rohrer it's personal.

"Why is the flag that is a small and simple gesture of the remembrance of my dead father such an issue? Why should one of the only signs of what my father be taken away?"

Before the vote some council members said they would welcome city staff to work on a general policy regarding flags on city property and at city events.