Pop singer Beyonce’s pro-militant, anti-law enforcement themed Super Bowl 50 halftime show is still yielding results — none of them good.

Rutherford County, Tennessee, Sheriff Robert Arnold tied gunfire outside his home Monday to the escalating anti-police sentiment in America.

“You do make people mad when you do your job; so that’s the only thing I could think of,” Arnold said at a Tuesday news conference, The Washington Post reported.

But then thought turned to Super Bowl Sunday and he came up with another explanation.

“With everything that happened since the Super Bowl,” he said. “That’s what I’m thinking: Here’s another target on law enforcement,”

He added: “You have Beyoncé’s video and that’s kind of bled over into other things, it seems.”

After the news conference, Arnold said that his remarks “reflect the violence and senseless killing of seven deputies in the U.S. since the show aired. My comments are an observation of the violence that has occurred but in no way is meant to offend anyone.”

Almost from the moment the pop idol left the field following the show, which honored the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, complaints began pouring in.

“Would that be acceptable if a band, a white band, came out in hoods and white sheets in the same sort of fashion?” outspoken Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke asked on Fox Business Network’s “Risk and Reward” last week. “We would be appalled and outraged.”

Blaze TV anchor Tomi Lahren called the message divisive — being performed at an event that brings Americans of every walk of life together.

And the scorn directed at Beyoncé continues to flood in.

“It’s inciting bad behavior,” National Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Jonathan Thompson told The Washington Post. “Art is one thing, but yelling fire in a crowded theater is an entirely different one.”

The Post reported:

On the night of the Super Bowl, Thompson said, the group was hosting a watch party at the J.W. Marriott in downtown Washington for members in town for an annual meeting. Reminded by one member that Beyoncé was about to perform her controversial new song, “Formation,” Thompson said he asked the party attendees if they wanted to turn off the volume.

Answers from other sheriffs weren’t long in coming.

“I got an overwhelming response from the audience: ‘We don’t want to hear it,’” he told the Post. “And some of the language was a bit salty.”

So the sound was muted and the everyone turned their backs to the screen.

Police groups also lodged complaints at the NFL for providing a venue for the show.

“We call on the NFL to separate itself from that message,” State Troopers Fraternal Association of N.J. President Christopher Burgos wrote to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, before singling out Beyoncé’s praise of the Black Panthers.

“It cannot be denied that the Black Panthers have assassinated officers and troopers who were upholding the Constitution and rule of law, keeping everyone in our society, regardless of color or creed safe,” he wrote.

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Michael Dorstewitz

Mike has been with BizPac Review almost from the beginning. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeBPR.

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