After several members of the St. Louis Rams NFL team made a "hands up" gesture of solidarity with Ferguson protesters before the team's home game yesterday, a group called the St. Louis Police Officers Association issued a statement criticizing the players. The St. Louis Police Officers Association is a union that represents city officers in collective bargaining and lobbies legislators; it appears to have been around for at least 46 years. Roorda himself has been in the news before: In 2001 he was fired from his police job in Arnold, a Missouri city about 20 miles from St. Louis, after making what an investigation determined to be a false accusation of abusive behavior against his police chief during a dispute over paid leave. The department's justification for his termination made reference to a previous incident in which Roorda had lied on a police report. From a Missouri Court of Appeals ruling upholding his firing: