The Broward County Police Benevolent Association—the union of officers in one of the three counties that make up the greater Miami area—is calling on its members to boycott Miami Dolphins games and return discounted tickets because the Dolphins have not successfully forced their players to stand during pregame national anthem ceremonies.
Three Dolphins players participated in demonstrations during the pregame anthem Thursday night, in Miami’s preseason game against the Buccaneers. Kenny Stills and Albert Wilson knelt quietly, and Robert Quinn stood with a raised fist. These peaceful protests by adults were described as “disgusting” by Broward PBA Vice President Rod Skirvin, per the Miami Herald:
“It’s a slap in the face,” Skirvin told the Miami Herald on Saturday. “We have a lot of police officers in the county who are ex-military. It’s not just a slap in the face to our military—past and present—but to all law enforcement officers across the country. As long as the protest continues, we will protest our attendance at the Dolphins games and continue to stay away from the NFL and its products.“
Worth noting, again: The ongoing anthem protests have absolutely nothing to do with the military, and in fact are a thoughtful expression of the very freedoms the troops are credited with preserving. Presumably a greater slap in the face to the military would be rules that force adult Americans to stand at attention for a pregame ceremony designed almost entirely to ingratiate a hideous corporate behemoth with lame-brained idiots, but since performative anthem-respecters actually don’t give a shit about the military, they aren’t especially bound to arguments that make such basic sense.
The NFL lacks a league-wide policy on anthem protests since the league suspended its hastily announced policy in July, literally hours after the Dolphins announced that they’d use the policy to make anthem protests a punishable offense. Lacking the authority to prevent or punish in any other way interfere with a player’s choice to orient his limbs in any particular way during the playing of a song before a football game, the Dolphins are now powerless to meet the demands of these police union bozos.