Quentin Tarantino Boycott: Border Patrol Joins With Numerous Police Unions, Including Chicago, LAPD And NYPD

The union for the National Border Patrol has joined with numerous police departments across the country in boycotting Quentin Tarantino following comments the director made more than a week ago during a rally protesting police brutality in New York.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, on Monday called the director’s remarks “a disgusting and dangerous insult” to all who work in law enforcement. 

“His hateful words, spoken just four days after a NYPD officer was gunned down in East Harlem, will only embolden those who would do harm to police officers,” Judd said in a statement. “Aren’t we a big enough target already?”

The border patrol union — which represents more than 16,500 employees — joined the growing boycott just days after police unions in Philadelphia, Houston, and, most recently Chicago, denounced the controversial filmmaker.  

Chicago joining the boycott means unions for the five largest police departments in the U.S. have officially condemned Tarantino.

Chicago Fraternal Order of Police president Dean Angelo tells The Hollywood Reporter, The Chicago police union “joins with others from coast to coast moving to boycott anything and everything, including his new release [The Hateful Eight].”

In its official statement, the Chicago police union said: “Not only should this person offer an apology to our entire Law Enforcement community, he needs to specifically address the women and men of the NYPD who his insulting words were directly aimed at. Furthermore, we ask that every member in the Law Enforcement community to take a moment to speak with your immediate and extended family members, friends and neighbors and ask them to stand with our Sisters and Brothers in Law Enforcement in this national boycott of his work.”

“He has an obligation to be more responsible,” according to a similar statement from the New Jersey State Police union, which has also joined the boycott. “This is not a movie, this is real life where police officers lives are impacted by his words.”

The day before, the Houston Police Officer’s Union called Tarantino’s comments “sickening.” 

“To use inflammatory rhetoric and imply that police officers are murderers does nothing to repair the fractured relationships with the community,” according to the Houston police union. “It simply makes things more difficult and only deepens the divide.

The National Association of Police Organizations based in Virginia and representing more than 1,000 police units and associations, and more than 241,000 sworn law enforcement officers, also joined the boycott.

“We ask officers to stop working special assignments or off-duty jobs, such as providing security, traffic control or technical advice for any of Tarantino’s projects,” the organization said in a statement. “We need to send a loud and clear message that such hateful rhetoric against police officers in unacceptable.”   

On Wednesday, the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 joined in shunning the filmmaker, calling him “anti-police.” 

“Mr. Tarantino has made a good living through his films, projecting into society at large violence and respect for criminals; he it turns out also hates cops,” according to a statement from the Philadelphia police union. 

On Tuesday, the LAPD union announced it joined the NYPD union in boycotting Tarantino’s films.

“Film director Quentin Tarantino took irresponsibility to a new and completely unacceptable level this past weekend by referring to police as murderers during an anti-police march in New York,” said a statement from the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

The Academy Award-winning filmmaker’s comments were called “inflammatory rhetoric,” and the director was accused of stoking the fire to make officers “even bigger targets than we already are,” according to the union’s statement.

“I’m a human being with a conscience,” said Tarantino at the Oct. 24 rally. “And if you believe there’s murder going on, then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered.”

The director of the upcoming Hateful Eight also 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,” according to multiple reports.

Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, called Tarantino a “purveyor of degeneracy” who “has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous ‘Cop Fiction.’ “

The LAPD union agreed, saying it “fully supported” the NYPD’s boycott.

“[Tarantino] made this statement just four days after a New York police officer was gunned down in the line of duty,” said the Protective League in its statement. “Hateful rhetoric dehumanizes police and encourages attacks on us.”

Numerous calls to Tarantino’s representative for comment were not returned.