The patches, which depict the American flag in black and white with one blue line to represent police, were the subject of debate in the village this summer. Activists said the shoulder patches ...

"They looked bad," says The Islander owner Anita Cereceda. "But once you got the muck off, it was like, ‘Oh, look at these!’" ...

Frank Kaminski, the police chief in Park Ridge near Chicago and president of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, could not be reached to discuss the shoulder patch issue.

The tradition began with a retired Chicago police officer donating a patch, and it grew organically over the years. It started with just one patch from a retired Chicago police officer’s uniform.