HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher took on over-the-top police in his recent broadcast, slamming officers for shooting unarmed innocents, all in the name of their own security.
“Somehow, police got it in their head that theirs is the most dangerous job. It’s not the most dangerous job — they have statistics on this stuff,” Mr. Maher said, Raw Story reported. “It’s behind electricians, fishermen, cab drivers. Yet somehow they got it in their head that they have to be protected first.”
He went on, decrying militarized police performing somewhat tame tasks.
“This is why we see SWAT teams breaking up poker games,” he said, Raw Story reported. “This is why we see the ridiculous use of Tasers. I feel like in the ’60s people called them ’pigs,’ and that was wrong, and America’s been overcompensating ever since.”
Mr. Maher included in his segment several news clips of police in action — in once instance, shooting a 22-year-old who carried an air rifle he took off the shelf at a Walmart in Ohio, and in another, shooting a South Carolina man for retrieving the identification card he was requested to provide.
“This isn’t every policeman in the country,” Mr. Maher said, Raw Story reported. “But it just makes me ask — is there any training going on? … I totally get it, that this is the most strapped country in the world. We’re armed to the teeth. When you’re a policeman, every encounter might be that kind of encounter. And yet, every week we see police officers going mental for no reason.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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