Amazon
Amazon is still hawking “Blue Lives Murder” merchandise almost a year after similar anti-cop gear first came to light — sparking renewed outrage from the Big Apple’s detective’s union, who accused the e-tailer of putting cops “at peril and risk.”
In a recent letter, the Detectives’ Endowment Association demanded Amazon stop selling the “disgusting” items emblazoned with the message “Blue Lives Murder.”
“It has come to my attention that your website is selling tee-shirts (sic) and other items emblazoned with the words ‘Blue Lives Murder,’” reads part of the letter sent by the DEA to the company’s Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky and obtained by The Post.
“It’s disheartening that your company would allow this disgusting motto on your sales platform.”
As of Sunday, apparel including an $8.99 black polyester “Blue Lives Murder” face mask and T-shirts and hoodies featuring with the cop-hating slogan — as well as the message “Blue Lives Aren’t Real” — could readily be found for sale on Amazon.
“Amazon is perpetrating anti-police rhetoric,” a Staten Island detective told The Post. “It is totally inaccurate. They should sell shirts that say, ‘Blue Lives Save Lives.’”
In its letter, the DEA demanded that Amazon “immediately” take down items with the “Blue Lives Murder” slogan because the phrase’s “only purpose is to invite further division, hatred and violence toward the hard-working men and women of the nation’s Police Departments, who are toiling every day to keep their communities safe.”
“To continue to hawk products emblazoned with this vile phrase puts the lives of Police Officers, and all law enforcement nationwide, at peril and risk,” the letter said.
The letter was also blasted out to detectives via email who were encourged to “adapt” it and send their own version to Amazon.
The letter also cites the online retailer’s policy of not listing products that “promote, incite, or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance, or promote organization with such views.”
“They are hypocrites. They say they don’t sell items that incite hatred,” fumed a Brooklyn detective. “I can’t think of an item that incites hatred more than these sweatshirts.”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
In June 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, igniting protests across the country and the five boroughs, similar “Blue Lives Murder” T-shirts were sold on Amazon. The 2020 merchandise appears to have since been removed from the site.
“It shows that [Amazon is] bending over backwards for this movement like many other companies are,” Sgt. Joe Imperatrice, who founded Blue Lives Matter NYC, said at the time.
The company has in the past yanked racist, anti-Semitic and sexist items that have caused controversy.
In July, it removed neo-Nazi books and Ku Klux Klan merchandise. The company in August also pulled down shirts with the phrase “Joe and Hoe” that disparaged the then-Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
*story by The New York Post
