Saugus High School banned students from carrying pro-police flags after off-duty cops saved the school from a deadly shooting just years prior.
QUICK FACTS:
- Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California banned the football team from waving a ‘Blue Lives Matter’ flag after law enforcement prevented a school shooter from harming students in 2019.
- “It wasn’t even a member of our Saugus community that complained originally,” parent Lexi Hawk said. “So I’m not exactly sure how the district came up with the decision without talking to parents.”
- William S. Hart Union High School District Superintendent Mike Kuhlman wrote a letter to parents, claiming that the flag honoring law enforcement could be seen as “uncomfortable and unwelcome” to some.
- Hawk said without social media, the incident never would have become a problem.
- “It was never an issue on the football team before somebody made it an issue on social media, so for him, he thought he was doing the right thing and being respectful and appreciating the law enforcement community as a whole,” Hawk said of her son. “And somebody took it way too far.”
PARENT ON HOW THE SCHOOL REACTED OVER ONE COMPLAINT OF THE PRO-POLICE FLAG:
“The reaction is distaste and disgust for the fact that it’s happening. At the game on Friday it was an overwhelming majority in the stands with their blue line flags or T-shirts or support of our law enforcement,” Mrs. Hawk said.
BACKGROUND:
- In Nov. 2021, Professor James Moore at the University of Southern California refused to take down his ‘Blue Lives Matter’ flag in his statistics classroom.
- “Blue lives protect black lives, and black lives are not at risk from the police — they are at risk from crime — and it’s blue lives that stand between them and crime,” Moore said at the time.
- “This version of the blue lives matter flag is intended to communicate and emphasize the necessary and high risk role civilian police authorities have in maintaining social order in a free and just society,” the professor continued.
