What was claimed
A picture shows police taking down a Union Jack from a lamp post.
Our verdict
False. Cumbria Police says the photo actually shows officers fitting a camera at a local church after vandalism reports, and confirmed the flag “stayed put”. We have seen no other evidence to contradict this.
A picture of police officers installing CCTV near a church has been shared online with misleading claims it shows officers removing a Union Jack from a lamp post.
The image has been circulating amid a social media campaign to raise St George’s and Union Jack flags on lamp posts and in other public spaces around the country, dubbed ‘Operation Raise the Colours’.
But Cumbria Police have said the photo showed officers installing CCTV on the lamp post and that the flag “stayed put”.
The picture shows someone in a high viz jacket on a police cherry picker next to a lamp post with a Union Jack flag on it, and has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook with overlaid text that reads “Police take down Union Flag from lamppost [sic]”.
But Cumbria Police said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter) on 29 August that “the photo shows officers fitting a camera at a local church after vandalism reports” and clarifying that “the flag stayed put”.
“No flags were harmed during the CCTV installation,” they said.
They posted a similar statement on Facebook that also included an image of the lamp post with the CCTV camera installed which showed the Union Jack still flying.
Full Fact matched the original picture to a location on Hartington Street in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, next to Hartington Street Methodist Church.
While the wall in the background is a different colour to the Google Street View image (which was taken in May 2022) other features show it was taken at the same place.
Barrow Police said in a 27 August post that the public may see an increased police presence in the area that day “as officers carry out enquiries including the installation of additional CCTV cameras to help prevent and detect crime in the local community”.
The post said officers had attended a church “on Hartington Street, Barrow” on 26 August after receiving a report of criminal damage to the building, and that a teenage boy was arrested on suspicion of religiously aggravated criminal damage.
We have seen no other evidence to contradict the version of events described by the local police. While we haven’t confirmed whether the flag is still there at the time of writing, Westmorland and Furness Council told us its highways team had received no reports about it and had not removed it.
We’ve seen other misleading social media posts relating to ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ in recent days, including a photo supposedly showing veterans’ homes decorated with England flags as part of this movement that actually showed the set of a 2023 Nike advert, and a fake Daily Mail article about the government supposedly considering banning England flags, which it told us it had no plans to do.
Misleading images are a common form of online misinformation. It’s important to consider whether images show what they claim to before sharing them on social media. Our guides to spotting misleading images may help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Cumbria Police confirmed the photo actually shows police officers fitting a CCTV camera and that the flag stayed put.
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