One week after a “Black Lives Matter” mural on a Manhattan street was painted, groups in favor of pro-police movement say they want one of their own murals with “Blue Lives Matter.
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Police advocacy groups, Blue Lives Matter NYC and Standing Up for NYC have teamed up to call on New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio to paint a street mural near the New York Police Department headquarters at One Police Plaza.
In a CNN report, Blue Lives Matter NYC founder Joe Imperatrice said that the idea for a “Blue Lives Matter” street mural was inspired by the “Black Lives Matter” mural that was painted on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower, and would help bring attention to the dangers that police officers face every day on the street.
“I think it was a positive form of action which will give people from all walks of life an option to express themselves and bring to light issues we as a nation need to come together to fix,” Imperatrice said.
“The ‘Blue Lives Matter’ mural would raise awareness for both the physical and verbal abuse officers to endure daily. It would also be a way to remember our fallen heroes who have lost their lives defending their cities,” Imperatrice added. “Just as Black Lives Matter wants to bring attention to a subject, which they should, as are we.”
The Blue Lives Matter organization is a loosely affiliated group of police officers and their supporters.
It emerged as a counter-movement to the Black Lives Matter movement after the 2014 killings of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. It has inspired some state-level legislation meant to make law enforcement a protected class under hate crime laws.
In 2018, those bills were criticized by the NAACP, ACLU, and others as a “political response” to national calls for police reform.
Governor De Blasio approved “Black Lives Matter” street mural and he even participated in painting a small portion of it after President Trump tweeted that the mural would be “denigrating” Fifth Avenue.
“President Trump said we would be denigrating the luxury of Fifth Avenue,” de Blasio said in response to Trump’s tweet. “Let me tell you: we’re not denigrating anything, we are liberating Fifth Avenue, we are uplifting Fifth Avenue.”