'Blue Lives Matter' billboards pop up across USA, stir controversy

Activists focused on eliminating racial profiling, police brutality and officer-involved killings have chanted, tweeted and held signs saying #BlackLivesMatter for more than a year as the nation debates criminal justice reforms and people of color.

Now, Louisiana-based Lamar Advertising has donated more than 150 company-owned billboards nationwide to a new campaign to put the slogans #BlueLivesMatter and #thankublu in public spaces, WXMI-TV and other outlets report. The billboards have already shown up in Memphis, Tenn., Toledo, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Hartford, Conn.

"We wanted to recognize the local police departments and men and women that put their lives on the line every day," Stephen Hebert of Lamar Advertising told WVIT-TV. "I don't know how they do it, and we just wanted it to be part of the community."

As the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag became increasingly popular, other similar slogans followed including #AllLivesMatter, which many see as a counter to the movement focused on people of color, #ChristianLivesMatter, which focuses on religious freedoms, and #BlueLivesMatter, which focuses on police officers.

Hebert told WVIT-TV that Lamar Advertising has now placed 302 #BlueLivesMatter billboards across the nation with the message. However, some see the campaign as a means of belittling the #BlackLivesMatter movement and co-opting activists' messaging.

"I think in some aspects it's shameful that the brand is being co-opted, but once again it was never meant to say 'only black lives matter,'" Darel Ross, co-executive director of LINC Community Revitalization Inc, told WXMI-TV. "Black lives matter was simply to call attention to a unique set of circumstances that was happening in the black community; and to any way undermine that, or belittle that, ultimately in no way shape or form adds to the relationship between police officers and the black community, or the community at large, because most people get it,"

Meanwhile, in 2011, Lamar Advertising was involved in another controversial campaign. The company put up a billboard sponsored by anti-abortion group, Life Always, showing a young black girl in a pink dress and the words "the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb," according to The New York Times.

After a few days, the company took the billboard down because workers at a restaurant attached to the building housing the sign were being harassed by patrons who objected to the message and a planned protest by people who opposed to the billboard prompted public safety concerns, CNN reported.