Beyoncé incites bad behavior, sheriffs claim
Beyoncé’s new music video and Super Bowl performance continue to attract the ire of law officers and officials who say she dialed up the hate and put police in danger.
At first, Sheriff Robert Arnold said he had no explanation for why shots were fired outside his home in Rutherford County, Tenn., on Monday night — except perhaps for an undercurrent of anti-police sentiment in America.
“You do make people mad when you do your job; so that’s the only thing I could think of,” Arnold said at a news conference Tuesday, according to edited video of his comments posted by the Daily News Journal.
But then another possibility came to mind, and Arnold blamed Beyoncé.
“With everything that happened since the Super Bowl … that’s what I’m thinking: Here’s another target on law enforcement,” he said.
He went on: “You have Beyoncé’s video and that’s kind of bled over into other things, it seems.”
In a subsequent statement, Arnold said that his remarks “reflect the violence and senseless killing of seven deputies in the U.S. since the show aired. My comments are an observation of the violence that has occurred but in no way is meant to offend anyone.”
Since the Super Bowl, five U.S. police officers have been fatally shot, according to the non-profit Officer Down Memorial Page.
The hits keep coming for Beyoncé, whose new music video and Super Bowl halftime-show performance continue to attract the ire of law enforcement officers and officials who say she dialed up the hate and put police in danger.
In particular, they say, her Super Bowl show — watched by nearly 120 million Americans — carried a dangerous anti-police message.
A number of police officers and officials and their supporters took to social media the night of the Super Bowl to voice their displeasure with Beyoncé — emotions channeled by public officials and police groups in the days since.
“It’s inciting bad behavior,” National Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Jonathan Thompson told the Washington Post this week. “Art is one thing, but yelling fire in a crowded theater is an entirely different one.”
On the night of the Super Bowl, Thompson said, the group was hosting a watch party at the J.W. Marriott in Washington for members in town for an annual meeting. Reminded by one member that Beyoncé was about to perform her controversial new song, “Formation,” Thompson said he asked the attendees if they wanted to turn off the volume.
“I got an overwhelming response from the audience: ‘We don’t want to hear it,’” he recalled. “And some of the language was a bit salty.”
Police who “make errors of judgment” should be held accountable, Thompson said, but Beyoncé’s went too far.
He and others take issue with the imagery in the “Formation” video and Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance of the song.
The video opens with the singer standing atop a half-submerged New Orleans police cruiser, a recurring image throughout. Other related symbols periodically flash on screen: Sirens; a jacket that says “POLICE” on it; graffiti that reads “stop shooting us.”
In her Super Bowl show, Beyoncé and her backup dancers wore costumes reminiscent of the Black Panther Party.
At a planned protest outside the National Football League’s headquarters on Tuesday, a trickle of anti-Beyoncé protesters were overshadowed by Black Lives Matter counter-protesters.