Good police work catches culprit who stole flags from 31 veterans’ graves
Placing small flags on the graves of military veterans around Memorial Day is a longtime tradition in this country. That holds just as true for small sections set aside for veterans at local cemeteries as it does for the more than 300,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery. And every year vandals and thieves either pull up the flags or steal them outright. The culprits, if caught, are usually smartass teenagers.
Several days ago, the parents of a veteran buried in the veterans’ section of the Cold Springs Cemetery in Lockport, NY called news reporters to complain that flags were being damaged in that burial place. Niagara County Sheriff James Voutour sent a deputy to investigate. He learned from the cemetery groundskeeper that 31 flags were missing from the graves of veterans.
The deputy staked out the cemetery and succeeded in catching the low-down flag thief in the act. Did the culprit turn out to be a teenager? Nope. The thief turned out to be a groundhog. The deputy watched in amazement as the little rascal broke the flags with his front paws and scurried off with the poles into his den.
Of course, this is not the first time that groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, have been caught stealing cemetery flags. For the past two years around July 4, flags that were placed on the graves of veterans at the Cedar Park Cemetery in Hudson, NY have been disappearing. Last year the missing flags had been set on the graves of Jewish soldiers and this year they were on the graves of black soldiers. Surveillance cameras set up by the cops revealed that the culprits were groundhogs.
At least the groundhog in Lockport was no bigot. Last year the groundhogs in Hudson were anti-Semitic and this year they were racists. I wonder if the flag thefts in Hudson will be classified as hate crimes.
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