MINNEAPOLIS — It sounds familiar: An incident over a flag has residents of a Minnesota city riled up.

But it’s not the flag you’re probably thinking.

In Marine on St. Croix, a typically tranquil burg of just 700 north of Stillwater, the fuss is about the Prisoners of War/Missing in Action flag. And a council member who took it from the city flagpole. And maybe some small-town politics.

News travels fast in places like Marine, but this episode got an extra boost from social media, when a sheriff’s office incident report was leaked and posted on a local Facebook page. It was a magnet for comments before a moderator took it down. Then, the controversy spilled into a meeting at City Hall.

Councilmember John Goodfellow admitted to law enforcement that he took the flag, according to a citation charging him with misdemeanor theft. He also returned it. This week, he sent an apology letter to the mayor, city administrator and council.

Goodfellow’s motive for doing so remains murky. But details in the sheriff’s report have given rise to calls for his resignation, speculation about who else was involved, criticism of the city’s response and its council politics.

“What I would encourage him to do is resign now and put himself on the ballot for November and leave it to the citizens,“ resident Bill Ries said perched atop a John Deere tractor in front of the town’s historic general store Monday. “If they believe he was in the right, then the citizens will band together and vote him back in.”

Many residents criticized Goodfellow’s actions, but most also declined to give their names. Some cited the dynamics of a small town like this one, known for New England-like architecture, logging history and community events, from art shows to a street dance and a Fourth of July parade.

Others called Goodfellow’s actions immature, but asked he be given another chance.

“No one supported or agreed with what he did,” resident Liz Kelly said of Goodfellow’s actions, recapping the recent City Council meeting. But she said she felt the reaction revealed tensions between longtime officials and more recently elected leaders, calling the city’s reaction “unhinged.”

“The fact that it was escalated, the fact that they pressed charges, to me, was just the vitriol spilling into the public,” she said.

As visitors turn into Marine from St. Croix Trail, they’re greeted by a gazebo on one side of the street and a grassy area with a flag pole on the other. On Monday, the POW/MIA flag was flying below the United States’ stars and stripes.

A plaque on the flag pole dedicates it to Melvin Krech, a local veteran listed missing or killed in action in the Vietnam War.

Aaron Ahlstrom, the executive director of the National League of POW/MIA Families, said this is the first time he’s heard of one of these flags being taken.

The flag was created in the 1970s to raise awareness of service members who had been taken prisoners of war or were missing in action, and Ahlstrom said it is common for cities, especially small and mid-sized ones, to fly the flag.

City staff noticed the POW/MIA flag was missing on May 18, and the city administrator notified the Washington County Sheriff’s Office May 21, according to the sheriff‘s office incident report posted to Facebook. City Administrator Lynette Peterson told a deputy she had reviewed security camera video.

At City Hall Monday, Peterson declined to comment, citing the ongoing legal situation.

On May 26, Peterson told the deputy that footage showed Goodfellow returning the flag to City Hall. Goodfellow, who was elected to the City Council in 2024, admitted to taking the flag, calling it a “moment of civil disobedience” in a conversation with a sheriff’s office detective, the report said.

The report didn’t clearly explain what statement he was trying to make, but Goodfellow told the Pioneer Press he was trying to start a discussion about flying other flags under the U.S. flag on the city flagpole.

He also told the detective he had previously turned the U.S. flag upside-down, which had escaped notice for about a week. (In an interview this week, he told the Minnesota Star Tribune he was not on the council at the time, and had turned the flag upside down as a sign of distress over President Donald Trump’s first term.)

Goodfellow said Wednesday that he had had some beer or wine, but wasn’t drunk at the time he removed the POW flag. Asked about what discussion he was trying to start, he demurred, saying “this is not a well thought-through thing.”

It’s not clear how the entire incident report, which is not considered public information at this stage, ended up on Facebook.

But that’s where another part of it generated further buzz: Was Mayor Kevin Nyenhuis involved?

The detective who investigated the incident described video footage of someone exiting the passenger side of an SUV and taking the flag around 9 p.m. on May 15. According to the report, the footage was not clear enough to identify the car or the person who got out of it.

But Peterson, the city administrator, told the detective she believed it was a vehicle Nyenhuis was driving because his was being repaired.

On Wednesday, Goodfellow said the vehicle was his. He had bought the SUV from Nyenhuis’ wife, and Nyenhuis sometimes borrowed it. But he said the mayor had no involvement in the flag episode.

"I just find it outrageous, frankly, that he got drug through the mud,“ he said. ”I caused that, so I regret that deeply.”

Nyenhuis, when asked for comment, reiterated his remarks from the recent council meeting. He said he was not involved and declined to say anything further about the flag incident, following legal advice to city elected officials and staff.

In a letter to fellow elected officials and city staff Wednesday, Goodfellow said he regretted following that advice because he lost his earliest opportunity to apologize.

“This has disturbed me,” he wrote. He said he did not want to remain silent until a scheduled hearing in October.

He said he was sorry for what he called “a reckless and indefensible act of ignorance.”

Goodfellow said in an interview that the incident did seem to bring some divisions in town to the fore, but he didn’t want to dwell on that.

“My strategy right now is to mend fences and help the community heal, and regain their trust," he said.

In town on Monday, the residents who said they hadn’t heard about the flag incident said they had been out of town, stayed off social media or deliberately avoided town gossip.

Some of the roughly dozen people interviewed for the story raised questions about what Goodfellow was thinking, or why the city moved ahead with charges after the flag was returned. Others mused about the politics behind it, big or small, alluding to broader tensions between Republicans and Democrats or between change and keeping Marine the way it is.

Nyenhuis, the mayor, said civil dialogue over disagreements is part of being on a city council.

Council Member Dan Willenbring agreed, and said he doesn’t think there’s a divide between newcomers and people who have been involved in city politics for a long time.

Win Miller, a former council member and mayor, said Goodfellow’s actions lacked empathy. If Goodfellow was seeking to start a conversation about the flag, he said, he should have put the issue on a council agenda.

“Like any community, we have our disagreements, but at least in my experience, they come before the city council. And you have an open, honest, fair hearing. And then the council members have to decide,” he said.

He said that the money the city will spend on legal fees easily could have covered the cost of a second flag pole to fly other flags.

In the wake of the flag incident, Miller bought a new flag pole and put up the U.S. and POW/MIA flags in front of his house.

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