The knee-jerk pro-cop rhetoric has been so bad, it's even been coming from Quentin's own father, Tony.



The director's father said in his statement he believes his son got carried away when he joined the protest rally in Manhattan last Saturday. "I wish he would take a hard, dispassionate look at the facts before jumping to conclusions and making these kinds of hurtful mistakes that dishonor an honorable profession," Tony Tarantino said. "We have many friends and relatives who have served honorably in the NYPD and the LAPD and clearly, they risk their lives to keep the rest of us safe. Cops are not murderers, they are heroes."

I think you'd get a different opinion if you, as I have in a few cases, talked to the families of people like Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd Kendrick McDade or Charly "Africa" Keunung . Some of those families members actually told their stories at the same rally where Tarantino spoke.

Or the family of this man, 59-year-old David Kassick who was shot in the back twice by Officer Lisa Mearkle while lying face down in the snow and complying fully with her demands.

There really isn't any other word for that other than "Murder" even though Officer Mearkle was ultimately, and unfathomably, found "not guilty".

Or here where Gardena CA. police killed a clearly unarmed man, Ricardo Diaz Zeferino, simply because he lowered his arms for a second after being stopped over a stolen bicycle [which he didn't steal, actually].

That shooting took place just blocks from where I'm sitting, about 500 ft from where I go shopping every weekend and I never even knew about it until the video was finally released. These things are happening all the time, almost daily, but they really don't get daily coverage even though the city ultimately settled for $4.7 million. None of the Officers involved were charged or convicted.

Another dead unarmed guy. Too bad. So sad, here's $4 mil, go away now. Thanks, toodles.

Let me repeat Quentin Tarantino did not say "all cops", in fact he's even come forward to make point of it.



Tarantino said his remarks at the rally last month were aimed at police officers who have been involved in unwarranted shootings of civilians.



Of course "all cops aren't murderers", just the very suggestion is outlandish to the point of insanity, but the problems are two fold 1) some of themmurderers and 2) the rest of them really don't seem toabout that and would rather go for the jugular of anyone who bothers to mention the first point.

Here he is with Chris Hayes.

Tarantino: Just because I was at a police anti-violence protest doesn't mean I'm anti-police. ... The issue was "Stop shooting unarmed people". ... We had over 40 families, not 40 people, 40 families that had lost loved ones come out and tell their stories. Unfortunately that's being ignored.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said the director “doesn’t understand the nature of the violence” that police officers face in their work. “Mr. Tarantino lives in a fantasy world. That’s how he makes his living,” Beck said. “His movies are extremely violent, but he doesn’t understand violence. … Unfortunately, he mistakes lawful use of force for murder, and it’s not.”

And he's exactly right. It's pretty amazing how intense police are reacting to someone suggesting, factually, that it's unacceptable for. They behave like it's theirto kill people who present no threat to them. Like there's just no way for them to avoid killing people who are unarmed, have their hands up ( yes Jonathon Capehart, God Damnit ), are already on the ground, or in some cases like Oscar Grant, Freddie Gray or Sandra Bland [who was tased] while, or like Darrien Hunt and Walter Scott who were. This is just perfectly acceptable to them, it's not any sort of problem at all. Just look at what LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said about Tarantino.No, sir, it is Murder even if many D.A. Offices lack the courage to pursue Murder convictions for them. Tarantino makes movies, but that doesn't mean he's personally divorced from reality. This idea that police are constantly under threat, constantly under siege seems almost like a pathological deficiency on their part. In my opinion they're acting like nothing so much as a pack of paranoid thugs.

It's just like this entire "Ferguson Effect" canard which Trevor Noah took apart quite nicely this week.

Noah: The police are just trying to make point a basic point: People are treating them unfairly just because of who they are and how they look. People following them around with cameras, watching everything they do, suspicious that they're always about to break the law, leaving police afraid to get out of their cars because someone might whip out a phone and brutally film them.

Wow, that's just a horrible thing to have to endure isn't it? Just imagine what it must be like to be under constant suspicion, people watching you like a hawk, afraid of you, shying away from you, avoiding you, filming you just waiting for you to fulfill their rock bottom low expectations.

Must be tough.

Not quite as tough as being randomly stopped, searched, insulted, threatened, harassed, brutalized and/or murdered by police, but tough.

The fact is that just under 20% of the people killed by police so far this year were unarmed, meanwhile studies show that crime has been going down for decades, and the so-called "Ferguson Effect" where there is a surge in crimes because of police cowed by harsh rhetoric and cameras is largely a hoax.



The idea that there is some sort of expansive crime wave is a huge myth, and the media has, by and large, done a terrible job at giving people perspective on a couple percentage points change in violent crime seen in some cities over a one year time frame – where crime has been at record lows. Crime is actually way down across the board when you look at statistics over the past two decades. The Washington Post’s Max Ehrenfreund is one of the very few reporters to comprehensively look at crime statistics across the country. Here’s what he found: “Overall, though, things haven’t changed much from the past several years, at least judging by the number of homicides committed in major cities. While the number of homicides has increased in many big cities, the increases are moderate, not more than they were a few years ago. Meanwhile, crime has declined in other cities”.

But I will tell you where there has been ain recent months, actually two of them, it's been in the numbers of people killed by cops. Here are the figures month by month with the number of unarmed persons in parenthesis.

Jan 88 (14)

Feb 83 (16)

Mar 114 (32) [Includes Charly "Africa" Keunang]

Apr 102 (27) [Includes Walter Scott & Freddie Gray]

May 86 (18)

Jun 79 (15)

Jul 122 (24) [Includes Samuel Dubose]

Aug 102 (14)

Sep 95 (20)

Oct 86 (10)

As you can see the number of police killings varies and may jump as much as 40% in a single month, but it rarely drops below 70 per month while averaging more than three people per day, and also you can see less than every two days police kill an unarmed person.

With figures like these, it's simply ridiculous to expect that anything Tarantino said about a "murder being a murder" requires any type of apology what-so-ever. In fact, police forces around the nation, those who refuse to correct, arrest and punish cops who brutalize and kill unarmed people who are no threat to them owe Mr. Tarantino and the rest of us, the public, the people they are supposed to be protecting not indiscriminately killing, far more than just a meager apology.

They owe us justice, but they're are a long, long way from delivering it.

Vyan

Here are some his comments from the rally where he talks about the death of Freddie Grey which has resulted in murder charges against several officers.



And this includes the key comment as well as comments from some of the families.



One other thing about Ricardo, the guy shot and killed in my hometown, not only was he not the bicycle thief, he was actually in the process of trying to help the guy who'd had his bike stolen try to find it when police shot him down and wounded his friend.



The men were friends of the bike theft victim and were searching for the missing bicycle. Mistaking them for the thieves, Sergeant Christopher Cuff ordered them to put their hands up. Diaz Zeferino ran up and intervened on behalf of his friends, shouting at Cuff he had the wrong men. Cuff yelled back in English and Spanish for him to step back, said the memo. Diaz Zeferino raised his hands, pounded his chest with both hands and reached to his waistband, said the memo. Two more police cars arrived and three officers emerged with guns drawn.

So they had the wrong guys and he tried to tell them that only to be killed himself, that'sfracked up.