Takeover Magazine 1st issue april 15th 2016 | Page 12

After hearing gunshots outside his house,
Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold
immediately blamed Beyoncé this week for
the shooting. Attacking her halftime show
performance for displaying “black power”
salutes and dressing similar to Black
Panthers, former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani stated, “What we should be doing
in the African-American community, and
all communities, is build up respect for
police officers. And focus on the fact that
when something does go wrong, OK, we’ll
work on that.”
When police unions across the country,
including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and
New York, asked cops to boycott Quentin
Tarantino’s recent movie, “The Hateful
Eight,” he responded, “What they’re doing
is pretty obvious. Instead of dealing with
the incidents of police brutality that those
people were bringing up, instead of
examining the problem of police brutality
in this country, better they single me out.
And 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.”
Instead of launching boycotts against
artists who are actually good at their jobs,
police unions would garner more public
support if they stopped acting like all cops
are infallible. Although the police unions
have the chance to publicly address
escalating police brutality and
militarization, they would rather pout in
the corner and boycott the few celebrities
with the courage to stand up for people
who did not deserve to die at the hands of
the police.

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