Waterloo Times

A popular Nashville-area radio personality wants to know what the fuss is about over Waterloo's first Black police chief who wants to an insignia that kinda-sorta resembles an old Ku Klux Klan dragon removed from department uniforms.

Kenny Smoov of WQQK-FM 92Q's "Kenny Smoov Morning Show" asked as much in a recent social media post.

Old Waterloo Police Department patch insignia

"Why Yall MAD," Smoov asked in his Monday, Sept. 20, Twitter post. "Waterloo's first Black police chief was slammed with criticism after he pushed for an emblem resembling the KKK's dragon insignia removed from officer's patches."

Smoov's post linked to NewsOne's coverage of the controversy over Waterloo Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald's attempts at reforms, including removal of the dragon insignia, about two years after becoming the city’s first Black police chief.

Fitzgerald "is facing intense opposition from some current and former officers" over his attempts to remove the "longtime insignia that resembles a Ku Klux Klan dragon," the Associate Press reported Sept.17.

The insignia, which more accurately resembles a griffin with its lion's body and eagle's head, has been on Waterloo police officers' uniforms since the 1960s, NewsOne reported.

Fitzgerald told the AP that response to his reforms is a "case study" of what happens when a Black police chief assumes that office in a city like Waterloo, with a history of racial division.

"I don't think there's been any police chief in America in a small- or medium-sized department that have endured this for the reasons I have endured it and I think the reasons have to do with race," Fitzgerald, who previously was police chief in Fort Worth, Texas and Allentown, Pennsylvania, said in the AP news story. "This is my fourth job being the first Black police chief. I’ve dealt with pushback in other places but never so overt. Never so nonfactual."

In October of last year, Waterloo City Council kicked off the controversy when it took initial steps to change the city's police department logo.

Citywide controversy followed and, on Sept. 7, city council voted 5-2 to order the police department to remove the symbol by month's end.