Georgia police officer fired for flying Confederate flag; says she didn't know people find stars and bars offensive
Roswell, Ga., police Sgt. Silvia Cotriss, a 20-year veteran of the department, was fired earlier this month. She plans to appeal the termination.
BY TOBIAS SALINGER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 27, 2016, 6:07 PM
An Atlanta-area police sergeant who was fired for flying a Confederate flag outside her home said she didn't know people find the flag offensive.
The Roswell, Ga., Police Department terminated Sgt. Silvia Cotriss due to conduct unbecoming of an officer after an area resident reported her stars and bars, according to internal investigation documents obtained Tuesday by WGCL-TV. Cotriss will appeal the July 14 firing, she said.
“If I knew it offended someone, my friends, my family, I wouldn’t do it,” Cotriss, 53, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Police officers have to adjust a lot of things in our lives, and for 20 years my whole life has been about making change and being held to a higher standard. We take an oath to help and protect people, so we can’t have a private life that’s really bad.”
Yet the flag displayed on a pole in the front yard of her Woodstock home for over a year “brought discredit to the Roswell Police Department,” a police captain wrote in Cotriss’ termination. She told detectives who interviewed her about the flag that it’s “part of her history, part of the South, part of history involving the Civil War.”
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A local man emailed Grant July 11 about the flag, telling the chief that in a situation where he and his family needed protection from the police, “my first thought/fear is that it may be the officer proudly flying his/her Confederate flag.”
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