On the evening of Sept. 11, Aurora Mayor John Laesch sent the order to the fire and police departments to raise the flags following the annual lowering to half mast in honor of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. However, the governor of Illinois had a different idea.
“The governor’s office came out with a directive to keep the flag at half staff due to political violence,” Laesch said, “And you know, ultimately, I made the decision at the end of the day to go ahead and continue to keep it at full staff.”
Laesch also said that there have been other significant instances of violence resulting in the death of multiple individuals, such as the assassination of the Minnesota Speaker of the House, that did not result in the flag being lowered.
“It’s a pretty significant event to have the flag lowered across the entire United States,” Laesch said. “I don’t think that the death of a private individual warrants that level of respect. I looked through [and] there’s quite a few other instances [of violence], even here in Aurora, like the tragedy at Henry Pratt in 2019, and Donald Trump did not declare or direct that we should lower the flags.”
Laesch said he has faced some backlash, not only from people who live in the city, but from media attention outside of Aurora as well. A man even came to his work only to bang on the windows, curse him out, and record him. However, not everyone is against Laesch’s decision.
“There’s been some internal criticism from both employees and residents,” Laesch said, “but on Tuesday night’s council meeting, we actually had more support in the room than opposition.”
Recognizing the reason for the order to keep the flags at half mast, Laesch says he feels for the family and doesn’t believe the young man should have lost his life. He continued, saying that even with differences in political opinion, most people agree that he shouldn’t have been killed. However, he feels this event didn’t warrant the flags to remain at half-mast.
“We just don’t lower the flag for every death,” Laesch said. “The flag would be permanently at half mast if we were to do that.”
