The former police officer demanding the NFL discipline five St. Louis Rams players over their display of "hand up, don't shoot" before a game on Sunday has a history of controversy, including being disciplined for lying in police reports as well as sponsoring legislation that would shield the names of police officers from public scrutiny unless charged with a crime.

Sunday night, St. Louis Police Officers Association Business Manager Jeff Roorda was quoted in a statement from the association calling for the five players, Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Jared Cook, Chris Givens, and Kenny Britt, to be disciplined and for the Rams and the NFL to make a public apology.

The SLPOA described the gesture as "tasteless, offensive and inflammatory."

In the statement, Roorda claimed, "Our officers have been working 12 hour shifts for over a week, they had days off including Thanksgiving cancelled so that they could defend this community from those on the streets that perpetuate this myth that Michael Brown was executed by a brother police officer and then, as the players and their fans sit safely in their dome under the watchful protection of hundreds of St. Louis's finest, they take to the turf to call a now-exonerated officer a murderer, that is way out-of-bounds, to put it in football parlance."

Roorda, a Democrat who most recently served in the Missouri House of Representatives before running for a seat in the state Senate and losing, was fired from the Arnold, Missouri police department in 2001 for misconduct after having been previously warned in another case where he was found to have lied in a police report.