Police angry at 'hands up' gesture by St. Louis Rams players

(CNN) -- A group representing police in St. Louis says it's infuriated after several St. Louis Rams players raised their hands in solidarity with Michael Brown during a pro football game Sunday.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association says it's 'profoundly disappointed' with those players for the St. Louis Rams. The players sent a silent but strong message before they took the field Sunday against the Oakland Raiders, raising their palms in the air, repeating the 'hands up, don't shoot' gesture that protesters in Ferguson have been using for months.

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

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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.