Rams players enter the field with the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture before their game against the Oakland Raiders on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014.

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NEW YORK — The NFL will not discipline five St. Louis Rams players for making an on-field “hands-up, don’t shoot” signal in support of Ferguson protesters before Sunday’s game against the Oakland Raiders, an NFL spokesman said in a Monday statement.

A group representing police in St. Louis said it was infuriated after several players made the gesture to show solidarity with protesters upset at Michael Brown’s death.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association says it was “profoundly disappointed” with the players, who raised their palms in the air, repeating the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture that protesters in Ferguson have been using for months.

Some say Brown, an unarmed black teenager, had his arms raised when a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot him to death Aug. 9. Wilson and others say Brown was not trying to surrender and in fact was attacking Wilson.

The association called for the Rams and the NFL to apologize and discipline the players involved, but the league said the plays will not be disciplined.

The players “chose to ignore the mountains of evidence released from the St. Louis County Grand Jury this week,” the police association said in a statement.

“The gesture has become synonymous with assertions that Michael Brown was innocent of any wrongdoing and attempting to surrender peacefully when Wilson, according to some now-discredited witnesses, gunned him down in cold blood,” the police association wrote.

The statement quoted the association’s business manager, Jeff Roorda, as saying “it is unthinkable that homegrown athletes would so publicly perpetuate a narrative that has been disproven over and over again.”

“I’d remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertisers’ products. It’s cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do.”