McKean County Sheriff’s Deputy Collin S. Meeker was wrong last month to step on private property and yank down a flag — no matter how disgusting its hateful symbolism.
As an officer of the court — and also as a member of the armed services — his first and only duty was to follow the state’s laws and the expectation that private property rights are to be respected. No matter how offensive a flag with Nazi symbols, including swastika, death’s head and SS insignia is considered to be, a law enforcement officer can never justify an act of trespassing and theft to remove such a flag from view.
Meeker, 23, is now paying a price for his alleged actions in the Potter County incident. He is charged with theft by unlawful taking and receiving stolen property, both third-degree misdemeanors, and criminal mischief and defiant trespassing, court records state. Released Friday on his own recognizance, he is suspended without pay from his position with the sheriff’s department while the incident is under investigation.
Saddest of all was the incident resulted in the opportunity for neo-Nazi Daniel Burnside of Ulysses, the Pennsylvania director of the so-called National Socialist Movement, to cloak himself in the role of aggrieved party.
Burnside said last week that he called McKean County Sheriff Dan Woods and told him he would not call the state police to report the incident if the deputy would agree to return the flag and apologize. Meeker, accompanied by a second deputy, indeed returned the flag and apologized.
But that apparently wasn’t enough.
Burnside, clearly aware of a potential PR opportunity when he sees one, asked Meeker to go inside and allow him to record a videotaped apology. Meeker would not do so, and Burnside claimed he felt the deputy “had no remorse for his actions” and was “very unprofessional.”
Therefore, Burnside contacted Coudersport-based state police to report the incident.
Again, Meeker was in the wrong if he committed the acts of which he is accused. His service as a court officer as well as an Air National Guard member are dedicated to upholding the U.S. Constitution — and not least the First Amendment, which maintains the right for such an insidious flag to fly.
But it’s also difficult to summon empathy for the neo-Nazi Burnside, whose white supremacist views and display of such vile symbols of hatred and death are antithetical to everything that true Americans stand for and believe in. Generations ago, strong and hopeful young people from every town in the Twin Tiers left home to serve against that foul flag and the murderous regime it represented in World War II. And more than a few of those young people never returned, giving all so that flag could be stamped down into the mire from which those who raised it crawled.
Yet in hate-filled ignorance, the symbols keep reappearing, testing us as we balance our rights of free speech, a cornerstone of our democracy, with human decency. But to ultimately protect the rights of all, it’s a test we cannot fail, no matter how distasteful it sometimes can be.
