Combat veteran Jeremiah Workman couldn't believe what he was seeing: a police officer testifying at the George Zimmerman murder trial was wearing military ribbons.
“Am I going blind or is this police officer in the Zimmerman-Martin trial wearing ribbons that she doesn’t rate?” He wrote beside a picture he posted to Facebook.
Gina Harkins of The Military Times saw his posting and reached out to Workman, who fought as a Marine in the second battle of Fallujah and was awarded the Navy Cross for valor.
She reports that Workman noticed two ribbons in particular — the World War II Army of Occupation Medal and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.
Harkins writes "Workman got a hold of [The Sanford Police Department] and said they told him they didn’t have their own awards system, so they went to the Army-Navy store around the corner and picked out Defense Department military ribbons to fit their own format. The WWII was selected, the police department official told Workman, because they knew there weren’t many veterans from that period alive so they didn’t think people would notice."
Workman's response to that: “So that makes it all better now because these guys are dead? The fact that that was their response is still pretty shameful, I think.”
It's abnormal for a police department that issues awards not to have its own internal system.
We've reached out to the chief of the Sanford PD to see if they plan on changing their award procedure following the Military Times report. We are awaiting a response.
*Update: The Sanford County Police Chief, Cecil E. Smith, responded via email to apologize if any veterans were offended, and promise to rectify the situation.
"As the new Police Chief, I hope you can imagine there are several policies and procedures which are being reviewed including the awards and uniform guidelines. I can assure you that going forward we will look into changing the ribbon structure to better fit the needs of the Sanford Police Department," wrote Smith.
Smith also expressed that the ribbon policy should not, in his opinion, reflect on the character or integrity of individual officers.
*Update: Other concerned veterans on the email chain have started a bit of a "reply all" battle with the chief — who is himself an Air Force vet — insisting that he ban the use of the ribbons immediately.