![blue line flag blue line flag](https://www.usflagsupply.com/images/detailed/31/thin_blue_line_flag_mrce-tu.jpg)
![blue line flag blue line flag](https://ultimateflags.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/police-flag-thin-blue-line-car-flags-for-sale-support-law-enforcement-copy-1024x1024.jpg)
The " Blue Lives Matter" movement was created in December 2014, after the homicides of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn, New York in the wake of the homicides of Eric Garner and Michael Brown Jr earlier that year and in the context of the greater Black Lives Matter movement.
![blue line flag blue line flag](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2JDHB62/bosnia-and-herzegovina-flag-with-tram-connecting-on-electric-line-with-blue-sky-as-background-electric-railway-train-and-power-supply-lines-cables-c-2JDHB62.jpg)
Variations of the flag, often using various national flags rendered in black and white with a blue line through the center, are seen below. The "Thin Blue Line" flag is all black, bearing a single horizontal blue stripe across its center.
#BLUE LINE FLAG CODE#
Īccording to a 2018 law review article, "thin blue line" also refers to an unwritten code of silence used to cover up police misconduct, also known as the blue wall of silence, a term dating back to 1978.
#BLUE LINE FLAG TRIAL#
Judge Don Metcalfe, who presided over the trial of Randall Adams, states in the film that prosecutor "Doug Mulder's final argument was one I'd never heard before: about the 'thin blue line' of police that separate the public from anarchy." The judge admitted to being deeply moved by the prosecutor's words, though the trial resulted in a wrongful conviction and death sentence. The term was used for the title of Errol Morris's 1988 documentary film The Thin Blue Line about the murder of the Dallas Police officer Robert W. Author and police officer Joseph Wambaugh helped to further popularize the phrase with his police novels throughout the 1970s and 1980s. By the early 1970s, the term had spread to police departments across the United States. The phrase is also documented in a 1965 pamphlet by the Massachusetts government, referring to its state police force, and in even earlier police reports of the NYPD. The Oxford English Dictionary records its use in 1962 by The Sunday Times referring to police presence at an anti-nuclear demonstration. As Parker explained, the thin blue line, representing the LAPD, was the barrier between law and order and social and civil anarchy. Parker used the term "thin blue line" to further reinforce the role of the LAPD.
![blue line flag blue line flag](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/3/retired-police-thin-blue-line-american-flag-usa-michael-s.jpg)
In the 1950s, Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker often used the term in speeches, and he also lent the phrase to the department-produced television show The Thin Blue Line. New York police commissioner Richard Enright used the phrase in 1922. It is unknown when the term was first used to refer to police. In the poem, the phrase is used to refer to the United States Army, alluding both to the Thin Red Line and to the fact that US Army soldiers wore blue uniforms from the eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. Īn early known use of the phrase "thin blue line" is from a 1911 poem by Nels Dickmann Anderson, titled "The Thin Blue Line". In the book Lawtalk, James Clapp and Elizabeth Thornburg say the term spread to other professions, e.g., a "thin white line of bishops". The name is now used for firefighters today. This action was widely publicized by the press and recreated in artwork, becoming one of the most famous battles of the Crimean War. The term is derived from the Thin Red Line, a formation of the 93rd Highland Regiment of Foot of the British Army at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854, in which the Scottish Highlanders stood their ground against a Russian cavalry charge. The "thin blue line" has also been associated with white nationalists in the US, particularly after the Unite the Right rally in 2017, who fly Thin Blue Line flags at their rallies. The "thin blue line" symbol has been used by the " Blue Lives Matter" movement, which began December 2014, after the homicides of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn, New York, in the wake of the homicides of Eric Garner and Michael Brown Jr earlier that year and in the context of the greater Black Lives Matter movement. Its use referring specifically to the police was popularized by Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker during the 1950s author and police officer Joseph Wambaugh in the 1970s, by which time "thin blue line" was used across the United States and Errol Morris's documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988). The phrase originated as an allusion to the British infantry regiment The Thin Red Line during the Crimean War in 1854, wherein the regiment of Scottish Highlanders-wearing red uniforms-famously held off a Russian cavalry charge. The "blue" in "thin blue line" refers to the blue color of the uniforms of many police departments. The " thin blue line" is a term that typically refers to the concept of the police as the line which keeps society from descending into violent chaos.