ARLINGTON, N.Y. -- Firefighters in the Arlington Fire District held a ceremony Tuesday afternoon to remove American flags from the back of three fire trucks.
"The ceremony today was to take the flags off the proper way with the proper respect, and I'm a little disappointed in the whole procedure, but if we had to take them down, they had to be taken down the right way," said Arlington Professional Firefighters Union President Joe Tarquinio.
The union that represents career firefighters and paramedics asked Fire Chief Tory Gallante to place the flags on the trucks.
"I gave the union permission to go ahead and put the flags on the vehicles at their expense," Gallante said.
On Tuesday, the fire chief says he was ordered to remove the flags after three board members voiced concerns at a meeting Monday night.
"We do have stickers on some of the vehicles; I was not told to remove the flag stickers, but the actual American flags on the back," Gallante said.
Gallante says the board made the wrong decision.
"I'm upset with the board’s direction, as is the membership. I wish things were different [and] the flags would remain," Gallante said.
"I think at a time when the country needs unity, to do something like this is the absolute ... it's next to flag burning in my mind," Tarquinio said.
The union president says his members have gotten a lot of support from the community about the flags.
"It crosses political lines; it crosses moral lines, religious lines. It's the flag of this country; it's nothing other than that. It's a symbol of the people of this country together as a whole, and I'm glad that there’s an outpour," Tarquinio said.
Gallante says he hopes the board will decide to place the flags back on the trucks after its next meeting in September.