A City Painted Over A Black Lives Matter Street Mural As Protests Continue
People pointed out the symbolism of the blue line of paint — but police said the paint is gray.
Police in Florissant, Missouri, protecting people while they paint a blue line over a BLM street mural
A photo posted to Twitter on Saturday showed a group of people painting over the stenciled words and questioned the use of a blue line of paint to do the job. "The thin blue line" has for decades been a metaphor for police work, and it's frequently included in pro-police imagery.
But according to Florissant Police Department Officer Steve Michael, the paint is not blue, but gray.
"It was painted over because it is illegal to paint the roadway," he said in an email to BuzzFeed News. "It has absolutely nothing to do with the message."
Michael added the new paint job was done by the city's street department.
"If we allow all groups to paint a message anywhere then we would have all kinds of different groups doing it," he said. "We simply cannot allow any group to paint anything on roadways."
Florissant, a St. Louis suburb, is a neighbor of Ferguson, Missouri, where 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed by police in 2014. Locals have protested many times since then, and they once again gathered against police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
#CenterLineWars
Police have at times used chemical agents on protesters, and earlier this month, an officer was fired after striking a man with an unmarked police vehicle.
The street mural was first painted on Friday, KMOV reported.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBqUXZzl_u7/?utm_source=ig_embed
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBqUXZzl_u7/?utm_source=ig_embed
After it was initially painted over, protesters once again wrote "Black Lives Matter" in the street's center lane. It was then again painted over, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter said.
Starting to chalk lines in for Black Lives Matter. Has been painted and repainted 2 times this weekend. Florissant police say deployment of chemical munitions imminent. 'Hell no, we won't go' chant protesters.
But as of Sunday night, protesters were again gathering. And they were again writing out "Black Lives Matter."
No comments:
Post a Comment