Newberry Commissioner Mark Clark is offering a $1,000 reward out of his own pocket to anyone who can identify the parties responsible for stealing numerous flags from the city’s Veterans Memorial Park. 

Clark, who is a former Marine and helped establish the park that was unveiled on Memorial Day, made the offer during a regular City Commission meeting on Monday. The park displayed multiple flags, including a U.S. flag and flags representing each branch of the armed forces.  

He said the city found out through Facebook that the flags had been stolen on Monday. Clark said the city would work to install cameras at the park, and the perpetrators would likely be prosecuted by the state attorney for violating state law by defacing the memorial. 

“Somebody had the audacity today, whether you’re young, old, I don’t really care who you are, to steal the flags from the veterans’ memorial,” Clark said. “It’s the most disgraceful thing to steal from that park or to deface that park…I hope it doesn’t happen again in our city.” 

The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office told Mainstreet Tuesday that they had just received the report and will be investigating the theft. 

U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack posted on Facebook Monday that her office would arrange to have a new American flag flown over the U.S. Capitol in honor of local veterans. Using the hashtag “newberrystrong,” she said she’d work with the Department of Defense to provide new flags representing each of the service branches. 

“[Veterans Memorial is] a beautiful place and I hate for people to take advantage of opportunities to do something negative,” said Newberry Commissioner Donald Long during Monday’s meeting. “It’s easy to do negative things, it’s harder to do positive. I hate when stuff like that happens in our city. So I hope we can find them and prosecute them and take care of it. But I definitely hate it.”