National Police Spokesman: Tarantino Has ‘Less Class Than Al Sharpton’

Quentin Tarantino has shown “less class than Al Sharpton” in recent weeks, the director of a national police coalition said Tuesday.

A number national law enforcement associations will move forward with a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming western, The Hateful Eight, despite the director’s Tuesday explanation of his controversial anti-police comments.

On Oct. 24 at the RiseUpOctober anti-police brutality rally in New York City, Tarantino said, “When I see murders, I do not stand by… I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers.”

He made the comments days after Randolph Holder, a 33 year-old police officer, was shot to death in East Harlem while pursuing an armed suspect, just a few miles from the rally’s location.

Tarantino has since been ensnared in a firestorm, as more and more of America’s men and women in blue stand together to boycott his much-anticipated film.

Few people close to the Pulp Fiction creator expected him to back down in the face of a national boycott, per sources who know him, and after nearly two weeks of silence, he proved them right.

Tarantino refused to apologize for describing police officers as “murderers” on Tuesday, when he told The Los Angeles Times, “I’m not taking back what I said. What I said was the truth.”

While Tarantino acknowledged, “all cops are not murderers,” he blamed “police mouthpieces” for the controversy, saying, “I’m not a cop hater.”

“…their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument,” Tarantino said.

TheWrap reports National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) director Bill Johnson said that after reading Tarantino’s explanation Tuesday his organization would persist with the boycott.

“He makes his living as a master craftsman of scene and setting, for him to claim now that he wasn’t perfectly aware that his message was precisely ‘cops are murderers’ is ludicrous,” said Johnson.

On behalf of NAPO, Johnson added:

He has the financial means and freedom to promulgate his message anywhere he wants; and by deliberately choosing New York City while a family is preparing the funeral for their slain police officer son is an extraordinarily low and mean gesture, one he ignores in today’s statement…

“Even Al Sharpton ultimately had the grace to not interfere with the funeral,” Johnson said. “I didn’t think it was possible to exhibit less class than Al Sharpton, but Mr. Tarantino managed to do it.”

Speaking from the national office of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), executive director Jim Pasco also pledged to move forward with the boycott late Tuesday.

“All of the sudden, he’s really not a cop hater, but at the same time we’re trying to intimidate him?” Pasco told the entertainment industry website. “So now, he’s a victim of the cops he doesn’t hate?”

Pasco added:

He’s got the best crisis and PR people money can buy. The only thing missing from his formula in sincerity. He’s not a credible person. This isn’t the first time he’s outraged a segment of the public, he knows at the end of the day this PR will be good for him. He’s selling a movie.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president, Patrick Lynch, spoke out Tuesday, telling The Hollywood Reporter in a statement, “The damage from Quentin Tarantino’s hateful comments about police officers has already been done,”

Amid fears the boycott will hurt the film financially, The Hateful Eight’s distributor The Weinstein Company also spoke out Tuesday.

“The Weinstein Co. has a longstanding relationship and friendship with Quentin and has a tremendous amount of respect for him as a filmmaker… We don’t speak for Quentin, he can and should be allowed to speak for himself,” a company spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.

Harvey Weinstein has reportedly been “furious” over Tarantino’s remarks, as Bradley Cooper’s Burnt’s disastrous $5 million opening last weekend puts more pressure on The Hateful Eight to perform or it risks putting TWC in even more red ink.

As of Tuesday evening, the planned boycott of the movie has now grown to more than 333,000 police officers nationwide and countless others who support law enforcement.

Tarantino’s own estranged father, who comes from a law enforcement family, spoke about his son’s comments this week during an exclusive interview with Breitbart’s John Nolte.

“I want to personally apologize to all police forces across the planet for his comments and reckless words,” Tony Tarantino told Breitbart News.

The Hateful Eight is set for limited release on Christmas Day. The film will open nationwide on Jan. 8.