A Miami police union has announced its plans to boycott Beyoncé’s concert in the city on 26 April. Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, which represents 1,100 officers, issued a statement saying the singer sought to “divide Americans by promoting the Black Panthers and her anti-police message shows how she does not support law enforcement”.
Ortiz was responding to Beyoncé’s video for Formation, and her Super Bowl halftime show, which presented images of black unity in the face of the police. Ortiz wrote: “I was one of the tens of thousands of law enforcement officers that didn’t watch the Super Bowl halftime show out of respect for our profession. On another day, while flipping through the television channels, I did mistakenly watch her Formation video that shows scenes of a young black boy dancing in front of police in riot gear, who signal their surrender by putting their hands up, referencing the ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement inspired by the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.”
He added:
While Beyoncé physically saluted the 50th anniversary of the Black Panthers movement at the Super Bowl, I salute NYPD Officer Richard Rainey, who succumbed to his injuries on 16 February 2016 from being shot by two Black Panthers who he had pulled over in a traffic stop. I also salute the dozens of law enforcement officers that have been assassinated by members of the Black Panthers.
We ask all law enforcement labour organisations to join our boycott across the country and to boycott all of her concerts.
Rainey, along with his fellow officer John Scarangella, was shot in 1981, and in fact died in March 2015, rather than February 2016. He was also shot not by Black Panthers, but by members of the Black Liberation Army.
The president of New York’s Sergeants Benevolent Association has voiced his support for the boycott call. “Law enforcement across the country has to make a statement that we’re not bad guys and she’s got to stop portraying us as bad guys,” Ed Mullins told the New York TV station Pix 11.
The Miami New Times reports that Ortiz is no stranger to making controversial statements, having previously criticised a woman who had filmed a police officer beating a handcuffed man, and said he had “heard rumours” that an assistant police chief who merely followed protocol when giving the pledge of allegiance – rather than holding her hand over her heart – was Muslim.
A spokesman for Miami-Dade Police Department responded: “Right now the union president has his first amendment right to say whatever he wants to say, but that doesn’t always translate to reality. As far as we see, there’s no indication that anything that is said there will translate into police officers not working the job.”
