Blue Lives Matter

Blue Lives Matter
Formation2014; 10 years ago (2014)
New York City, U.S.
FoundersActive and retired law enforcement officers
TypeSocial movement
Location
  • United States

Blue Lives Matter (also known as Police Lives Matter) is a countermovement in the United States that aims to show solidarity with the police. It emerged in 2014 in direct opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement[1] and gained traction following the high-profile homicides of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn, New York.[2][3][4][5] Supporters of Blue Lives Matter have called for crimes committed against police officers to be classified as hate crimes.[6]

Critics[who?] have said that while being Black is an inherent characteristic, being a police officer is a choice, and that police officers are already respected in most communities. They add that attacking or killing a police officer already carries a higher penalty than attacking a non-police officer in most states.[6]

  1. ^ Lynch, Sarah N. (October 16, 2017). "U.S. police deaths on duty spiked in 2016: FBI". Reuters. Archived from the original on March 31, 2024. Retrieved March 31, 2024.
  2. ^ Smith, Christopher. "BLUE LIVES MATTER VERSUS BLACK LIVES MATTER: BENEFICIAL SOCIAL POLICIES AS THE PATH AWAY FROM PUNITIVE RHETORIC AND HARM" (PDF). Retrieved February 8, 2023.
  3. ^ Longazel, Jamie (July 1, 2021). "'Blue Lives Matter' and the legacy of blackface minstrelsy". Race & Class. 63 (1): 91–106. doi:10.1177/03063968211012276. S2CID 235716239. Retrieved January 23, 2023. Blue Lives Matter countermovement, which emerged in 2014 as a rebuttal to Black Lives Matter and gained traction following high-profile
  4. ^ John S. Dempsey; Linda S. Forst; Steven B. Carter (January 1, 2018). An Introduction to Policing. Cengage Learning. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-337-55875-4. Archived from the original on September 18, 2020. Retrieved January 24, 2019. A pro-police movement called Blue Lives Matter was established in response to Black Lives matter and to the increasing attacks on law enforcement, which resulted in 63 officer line-of-duty deaths by gunfire in 2016.
  5. ^ Valencia, Milton J. "How 'Blue Lives Matter' trend has emerged as the identity politics of the right - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved January 23, 2023.
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).