Cherokee County Solicitor General David Cannon Jr. says he never intended to disrespect Old Glory or victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack when he had youths remove 3,000 flags from a Canton city park this week.
The flags, erected to honor 9/11 victims during the 10th anniversary of the attacks, were stuffed in boxes and receptacles, and left in a pile on the floor of the old Cherokee County Courthouse.
Members of Salute to Our Veterans, which had planned to properly retire the flags, were so angry when they did not see the flags in the park, they filed a police report, according to Channel 2 Action News.
They became even more incensed when they found out what actually happened to the flags.
“It’s very disrespectful [and] disgraceful, as far as I’m concerned,” Lori Pesta, founder of Salute Our Veterans, said told Channel 2 after finding the flags in piles and some in trash cans.
“It's the American people and the people of 9/11 that are really disrespected in this,” Pesta said.
Members of the group spent Friday carefully rolling up flags and storing them in containers.
Cannon acknowledged he should have done more due diligence before sending nearly two dozen youths from his pretrial diversion program to collect the flags.
“'Truly, I'm sorry,” he told Channel 2. “I wasn't trying to get anyone riled. I was just trying to help. That's all I was trying to do."
Cannon told the Canton-SixesPatch he didn’t know about the retirement ceremony planned for the flags and that he should have checked with the city.
He said he also should have done a better job supervising the flags’ removal.
"We could have done a better job of stacking them,” the solicitor general told Channel 2. “My goal was to get them out of the weather."
John Marinko of the Cherokee Republican Party told the Patch Cannon had no authority as “a county employee” to remove flags from city property. “It’s just plain wrong.”
Salute to Our Veterans placed the flags in storage for future memorial tributes.
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