Former New York City cop John J. Cardillo spoke exclusively with Breitbart News about a full page ad he and an associate ran in the New York Daily News urging embattled director Quentin Tarantino to join police for a patrol Ride Along to experience firsthand the tough job of America’s law enforcement.
Cardillo and Patrick J. Brosnan, a former NYPD detective, ran the ad the day after Tarantino appeared on MSNBC to double down on comments he made calling police officers “murderers” at an anti-police brutality rally. They used the ad to publicly ask the Hateful Eight director to participate in a Ride Along with the NYPD because they believe his comments demonstrate his ignorance of the nature of their job.
Cardillo told Breitbart News that they only published the ad after Tarantino failed to respond to a private request to participate in a Ride Along.
The NYPD’s Ride Along program gives New York residents, ages 18 and older, the opportunity to spend time on patrol with officers and provides a firsthand perspective of what an officer on patrol generally encounters during a tour of duty.
On Oct. 24, Tarantino stood before a sign in New York that read “Stop Police Terror.”
“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,” said Tarantino, just a few miles from where 33-year-old officer Randolph Holder was murdered by a suspected gang member in East Harlem.
Cardillo tells Breitbart he believes Tarantino’s celebrity status may have left him detached from the real world – a world where police officers are forced to sometimes make split-second decisions.
“Condemning hard-working men and women who face danger daily on behalf of the public decreases their effectiveness in protecting the communities they are sworn to protect,” the Daily News ad reads. “We ask you to see and decide for yourself if police officers care about the race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation of the victims or criminals when responding to a call for help.”
Cardillo and his business partners at Brosnan Risk Consultants, a private security firm responsible for the ad, were all “incensed” by Tarantino’s remarks, given their respective law enforcement backgrounds, says Cardillo.
The firm’s ad calls on Tarantino, and indeed all fierce critics of law enforcement, to participate in the program.
See for your self what it is like to conduct a car stop or enter a pitch dark building in pursuit of an armed robber and attempted murder; learn firsthand what police officers experience every day; get to know these officers as human beings – mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters… Then maybe we can have a public dialogue about your experience.
Cardillo tells Breitbart that Tarantino should put his money where his mouth his, saying, “If you’re going to criticize us with such vitriol, go spend eight hours with the police before doing so.”
Tarantino told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wednesday:
I was under the impression I was an American and that I had First Amendment rights, and there was no problem with me going to an anti-police brutality protest, and speaking my mind, and just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest doesn’t mean I’m anti-police.
Of a nationwide police boycott of Tarantino’s upcoming western The Hateful Eight, the former police officer says the intent of the boycott is not to impede the director’s right to speak up, but rather to implore him to educate himself.
“I don’t have to like your incendiary speech,” he said, “but you have every right to say it.”
Adds Cardillo, “This has been one of the most dangerous years for police officers.”
Tarantino’s “tasteless comments” were made only days after Holder, a black cop, was killed while doing his job, according to Cardillo, who also challenges any notion that police officers intentionally target blacks.
“We want him [Tarantino] to get to know the people. He travels in the elite Hollywood crowd, but never stops to say, ‘These people are human.’”
While Cardillo expressed disappointment Tarantino has thus far doubled down on his “murderer” comments, he hopes to use them as an opportunity to raise public awareness of the sacrifices police officers make.
Before you call these people murderers, meet them, go ride along with them… I support your First Amendment right. Tarantino has every right to say what he wants, but I don’t respect critics who haven’t walked in the shoes of those they condemn.
The newspaper ad, which is signed by Cardillo and Brosnan, concludes: “Life and death decisions that often have to be made in the blink of an eye are part of a police officer’s daily life. It is a responsibility police officers take very seriously. No officer considers the taking of a human life a trivial matter. But policing is a two-way street.”
“We look forward to working with you to help you understand the dangers of law-enforcement; the other side of the coin.”
Tarantino has not yet responded, either publicly or privately, to a request to spend a few hours with the men and women who keep him safe, but that hasn’t stopped him from calling on them for help.
As reported Wednesday, law enforcement sources told TMZ that Tarantino, or someone working with him, called police out to his home on the afternoon of Sunday Oct. 11 to report a suspicious individual loitering in his backyard.
The director had reportedly asked the individual to leave and called police after he refused.
John J. Cardillo is the host of The John Cardillo Show, Saturdays 3-4PM on iHeartMedia’s 1290 WJNO The Palm Beaches, and also streams live via iHeartRADIO.
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