Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said he does not believe all policemen are murderers, and he does not fear the boycott that the head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association Patrick Lynch recently called for after the auteure participated in a protest against police brutality last month.
"All cops are not murderers. I never said. I never even implied that," he told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Wednesday. "I do believe that the cops who killed Eric Garner are murderers. I do believe that when Walter Scott was shot in the back in the park eight times by a cop, he was murdered. I do believe Tamir Rice was murdered."
Tarantino, who found himself in hot water with police after taking part in a march against police brutality in Manhattan in late October, spoke for the first time about the controversy his presence drummed up in the Times interview.
Tarantino said he happily joined the Rise Up October protest after organizers contacted him. He spoke about the stories he heard from families who lost loved ones to police violence, highlighting his contact with the woman he marched with, whose brother was gunned down by police.
"That was a very, very moving experience," he said. "I was proud to stand with those people. There's a lot of mouthpieces talking badly about me, but those families aren't. Those families are defending me."
After Tarantino marched, police officials were quick to slam him.
"The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls 'murderers' aren't living in one of his depraved big-screen fantasies — they're risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem," Lynch said in a statement shortly after the march.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton also took an opportunity to publicly skewer the director of "Pulp Fiction" and "Django Unchained."
"Shame on him, particularly at this time when we are grieving the murder of a New York City police officer," he said, in reference to officer Randolph Holder, who was slain by a gunman in East Harlem four days after the march Tarantino took part in. "There are no words to describe the contempt I have for him and his comments."
