The photo was posted Tuesday afternoon to the Chicago Code Blue Facebook page, which vocally advocates support for police.
A newly posted photo appears to show a Chicago Police officer, in uniform, holding an American flag next to a sign that read “I stand for the anthem, I love the American flag, I support my president and the 2nd Amendment,” a violation of department policy.
Department officials said the officer will face a reprimand for the political statement.
The photo was posted Tuesday afternoon to the Chicago Code Blue Facebook page, which vocally advocates support for police. In recent days, there have been several posts critical of NFL players dropping to a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.
A department spokesman said the CPD will remind officers about expressing political views “through a roll call training.”
“As we have said before, the rules prohibiting officers from making political statements while in uniform will be applied consistently,” Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement on Wednesday. “This will be no different. The Department will remind all officers about the department’s prohibiting political statements while on duty through a roll call training.”
Guglielmi did not respond to questions about how the department verified the photo’s authenticity.
The photo surfaced two days after the CPD announced it was investigating a photo of what appears to be two uniformed officers who were photographed “taking a knee” in the lobby of a South Side precinct.
Those two officers are facing a reprimand for the photo.
The kneeling pose became controversial last fall, when NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose last season to kneel during the national anthem before games to protest police brutality. Several other players have chosen to make similar, silent protests during the anthem this year, prompting an outraged series of tweets from President Donald Trump over the weekend that seemed to galvanize players.
The department’s code of conduct bars uniformed officers from participating in any “partisan political campaign,” a rule that supervisors reminded all rank-and-file officers about following a January incident in which a Twitter user posted a picture of a CPD vehicle parked near an Inauguration Day protest with a red “Make America Great Again” hat on the dashboard.
