The law enforcement backlash against Beyoncé has continued weeks after her politically charged Super Bowl halftime show performance.
Critics of the pop star have attacked her routine, which featured a squad of black women in Black Panther-inspired outfits, as anti-police, although there was not a single lyric in her song or aspect of her dance routine that distinctly referenced law enforcement. Prior to the Super Bowl, Beyoncé released a music video for her new track “Formation” that featured nods to the Black Lives Matter movement (a hoodie-clad boy inspires cops in riot gear to mimic the iconic ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ gesture popularized in Ferguson, Missouri, in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s shooting death) and the image of a sinking police car.
Beyoncé’s new political turn has led to calls for protests and boycotts, most recently by the president of the Miami police union. “The fact that Beyoncé used this year’s Super Bowl to divide Americans by promoting the Black Panthers and her anti-police message shows how she does not support law enforcement,” Fraternal Order of Police President Javier Ortiz wrote in news release this week. Although Ortiz says that he personally refused to watch her halftime show performance, he did take issue with her music video.
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“I challenge Beyoncé to review the 86-page report written by the United States Department of Justice on the death investigation of Michael Brown,” he added. “Hands up, don’t shoot was built on a lie.” He goes on to encourage his fellow officers in Miami and around the country to boycott shows on her new tour. But Ortiz’s call may be too little, too late. Beyoncé’s April 27 performance at Marlins Park in the city is already reportedly sold out.
According to the Miami New Times, Ortiz has been under fire for calling 12-year-old police shooting victim Tamir Rice a “thug” on social media and accusing an assistant chief of police of being Muslim for not holding her hand over her heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.









