Bill Maher Tells Cops To Stop ‘Going Mental For No Reason’

I am disgusted by the police officer who shot a South Carolina man for reaching for his driver's license, as the police officer instructed.  The police officer said later he was alarmed by the man's sudden movement, thinking the man might be reaching for a gun.  This is not the first time this police officer has been involved in a violent traffic incident; and I know nothing about being a police officer.  Nonetheless, this is ridiculous.  The police too often have acted like militarized street thugs, and blacks are too often the victims, sadly.  I am glad that Bill Maher is willing to criticize the police, and rightly so.  I don't know about the police having an inferiority complex, but it seems nowadays you have to live scared of being shot by the police.

BY Shannon Barger
Addicting Info
28 September 2014

On his Friday night episode of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, host and political satirist Bill Maher once again addressed the issue of racism, this time turning his attention to America’s police forces, saying that cops need to stop “going mental for no reason.” Maher attempted to begin on a (sarcastically) positive note:

"Now, this week I want to say something nice about the police before we start listing all the people they shot and beat up this week that they shouldn’t have. 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."

The somewhat understanding tone was short- lived, though, as the show aired a clip of a police officer shooting and killing 22-year-old John Crawford in an Ohio Wal-Mart for carrying an air pellet rifle purchased in the store. Maher continued during this clip:

"And yet, every week we see police officers going mental for no reason."

The tirade continued, this time with a clip of a South Carolina officer shooting at a man for reaching for the requested photo ID. Maher said:

"This isn’t every policeman in the country, but it just makes me ask, is there any training going on? I mean, [the South Carolina officer] shot this guy four times at point-blank range and only winged him once."

That’s a great point. Four point blank shots and only one hit? Where did this guy attend the police academy, the Barney Fife School of Law Enforcement? I guess the silver lining here is that the cop in this particular situation is off the streets and has been charged.

At this point, panelist Charles Blow chimed in:

"These aren’t equal opportunity shootings. Not everybody is being shot by the cops — when we see these tapes, we’re seeing black men being shot. We have to address the elephant in the room."

Blow is right, of course. The police are afraid of minorities, particularly of black men. This is institutionalized racism at work, and anyone who cannot see that is either willfully blind or ignorant, or racist themselves.

Maher added at a later point in the show:

"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. It’s behind electricians, fishermen, cab drivers. Yet somehow they got it in their head that they have to be protected first.

This is why we see SWAT teams breaking up poker games. 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."

He’s right, of course. It’s as if the police have something to prove with their heavy artillery and overzealous use of guns, tasers, and other forms of excessive force. Unfortunately, their inferiority complex is causing injury and death to innocent people, and something needs to be done about it. The even more unfortunate fact is that the people in the position to do something about it are in the pockets of the organized street gangs that we call our American police forces, and, because of that, the cycle keeps repeating.