Quentin Tarantino isn't backing down. After the director was spotted marching in a protest against police brutality, he was criticized by his own father, and police called for a boycott of his films and threatened him with a "surprise." Undeterred, Tarantino doubled down on his comments, and now others are speaking out to support him. One such supporter is Bill Maher, who invited Tarantino onto his show to talk about his recent remarks.
Maher played the video of Pennsylvania officer Lisa Mearkle tasing and then shooting a (face down) suspect in the back. (Mearkle was just cleared of all charges.) "What danger is this police officer in?" Maher asked after the video. "They want us to think they’re so brave, but they don’t always act brave. That’s not brave." He then rattled off a few suggestions for police departments:
One: Do a better job of weeding out the personality profile who becomes the bad cop. Because we all know that kid in school who had no friends, wasn’t popular, and thought ‘hmm if I was the hall monitor, I could lord it over people.’ It’s not that hard to stop that guy from becoming a cop. Two: Be more loyal to right than to cops. When a cop does a bad thing, don’t always be the thin blue line defending the cop no matter what he does.
Tarantino agreed, saying "If they were really serious about this, they wouldn't close ranks on bad cops." But Maher had the final word, echoing Tarantino's original statements from the protest: "You have to call murder murder, even if it's from cops."
