Georgia officer fired for flying cCnfederate flag now suing department
A former police sergeant is suing the police department for firing her for flying a Confederate flag outside of her Georgia home. She has help too, from a group with alleged ties to the white supremacist movement.
Silvia Cotriss almost made it to her 20th year on the Roswell police force but was terminated when the department called her flying the flag conduct unbecoming an officer.
Her lawyer says that her firing was a direct violation of his client’s constitutional right to free speech.
“She was displaying her pride in her Southern heritage and honoring her recently deceased husband,” according to the lawsuit. “The Confederate flag [is a] generally accepted symbol of Georgia heritage.”
— Police officer suspended after driving with Confederate flag —
Her suit is being helped by the Southern Legal Resource Center. They are a North Carolina non-profit whose Facebook page reads, “Confederate Southern Americans” are “America’s most persecuted minority.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has said that they consider the co-founder of the Southern Legal Resource Center a “white supremacist lawyer.”
The law center tracks hate groups all over the country and states on their website that Lyons serves what “has effectively become the legal arm of the neo-Confederate movement.”
Lyons has denied having any affiliation with hate groups and said to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all he wants to do is make sure Cotriss “gets a fair shake after being unfairly terminated.”
Cotriss is suing the city of Roswell as well as the chief of police in order to be reinstated. If they refuse, she is willing to settle the case for 10 years of pay and other compensatory damages.
