Maher on Philadelphia Police Shooting: ‘You Could Defuse a Guy with a Knife’

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher reacted to the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia by criticizing “this attitude that the police have that our lives are somehow more valuable” and stating that “you could get rid of a knife from a guy without killing him.”

Maher said that while we can’t know if the shooting was motivated by racism, the police “have to find a way to not kill people who — you could do it — you could get rid of a knife from a guy without killing him. This, to me, is more about…tactics and training and this attitude that the police have that our lives are somehow more valuable. I’m not saying they’re less valuable, but they’re not more precious. You could defuse a guy with a knife without firing 14 slugs into him. You can’t — police have got to stop this attitude, this is what Stalin used to say, no person, no problem. Yes, exactly, if there’s no person, there’s no problem. But that can’t be the way to do it.”

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