POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — A fire department was instructed to cease flying the American flag on its fire trucks this week.
The Board of Fire Commissioners ordered the Arlington Fire District to remove the U.S. flags from their trucks, stating that they were a liability and could distract other drivers.
The flags were removed from three fire trucks during a ceremony Tuesday.
“If we had to take them down, they had to be taken down right away,” Joseph Tarquinio, the city’s union president, told the Poughkeepsie Journal. “At the time when the county needs unity, to do something like this … it’s next to flag-burning in my mind.”
The flags were recently mounted onto the rigs at the request of the union.
Flag removal ceremony at Arlington Fire District headquarters pic.twitter.com/HsSRbIadtL
— Nina Schutzman (@PoJoNSchutzman) August 17, 2016
Although the Federal Flag Code states flags “should not be draped over the hood, top, sides, or back of a vehicle,” it is not binding, and each state has its own flag law, reported FOX News.
The board did not take an official vote on the issue, and was decided by a majority instead.
Arlington Fire Chief Tory Gallante declined to comment on the board’s decision, but said he was “very disappointed with their direction.”
The board’s chairman, Jim Beretta, told the Journal Wednesday that he’d like to reach a compromise with Gallante regarding the flags.
Beretta noted that the board’s decision “did nothing more than continue operations as it always had been minus the newly mounted physical flags that the board had no prior knowledge of … a majority felt it was a liability during normal operations for our people and other motorists.”
A rally will be held Saturday to promote reinstating the flags.
“I think (for) a lot of people … (the issue) crosses political lines, moral lines, religious lines,” Tarquino said. “It’s the flag of this country.”