title: GA POLICE Sergeant FIRED For Flying Confederate Flag At Her Home
text: The political correctness police are apparently more powerful than those who have been trained and dedicate their lives to defending citizens A Roswell police sergeant who was fired from her job this month for flying the Confederate battle flag in front of her house is appealing her termination and said Tuesday she had no idea the flag was controversial.In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, former police sergeant Silvia Cotriss said she had been flying the battle flag below the American flag in front of her Woodstock house for more than a year with no complaints from neighbors or passersby. So she was surprised the week of July 11, when detectives with the department s internal affairs division notified her that she was being investigated for conduct unbecoming an officer on or off duty. If I knew it offended someone, my friends, my family, I wouldn t do it,  Cotriss told the AJC.  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. A man who lives nearby her home was driving his daughter and son to pre-school and noticed a Confederate flag in Coteries  yard. It is unclear whether he knew Cotriss, but the man said in an email to Grant that,  It is very difficult to explain to my daughter that we should trust our police. But in the same sentiment if I were to ever be pulled over or some situation where my family needs the police to protect and serve, my first thought/fear is that it may be the officer proudly flying his/her Confederate flag. The man claimed Cotriss  police vehicle was in the driveway, a charge Cotriss denies.Cotriss said she and her husband, who died recently, had gotten a battle flag in May 2015 during a vacation to Panama City, Fla., for  Thunder Beach,  a popular biker festival. The battle flag had a motorcycle in the center, and Cotriss flew it beneath the American flag on a towering pole in her front yard. Over time the Confederate emblem became tattered and she recently asked a friend to take it down, she said. A neighbor offered her a new one, without a motorcycle, and her friend accepted it for herThe day before the man had attended Eagle s Nest Church, a predominantly African-American congregation in Roswell, where Grant and the entire Roswell police force had been invited to worship in the aftermath of the Dallas police massacre. Pastor Lee Jenkins extended the invitation and Grant said, in a previous interview, that he accepted because,  For me the takeaway from (the protests in) Ferguson was that a lot of African-Americans don t trust police officers and don t see them as I did when I was growing up. And since the unrest in Ferguson, after the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer, Grant had been visiting several churches in the Roswell area to build bridges. Grant was the only police official to attend the Eagle s Nest service and Jenkins said after the chief addressed the congregation, they gave him a standing ovation.The man who lodged the complaint against Coteries referenced the service in his email to Grant and in an email to Jenkins. Via: AJC