Pat Lynch—the Loudmouthed Bigot Leading the Pack in the Pig Attacks on Quentin Tarantino

November 2, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Pat Lynch, the head of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (the union for NYPD cops), has been leading the pack in the vicious pig attacks on Quentin Tarantino for speaking out against murder by police. The day after Tarantino joined in with thousands of others who rallied and marched as part of Rise Up October to demand an end to police terror, Lynch issued a call to boycott his films—followed by similar attacks and boycott calls from police unions across the country including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago and New Jersey, with this reactionary venom spread widely by the media.

This isn’t the first time the media has given Lynch a big loudspeaker to spew his shit. After NYPD cop Daniel Pantaleo murdered Eric Garner with a chokehold—violating the NYPD’s own rules—Lynch was covered widely by the media when he said Pantaleo used a legal “takedown maneuver,” not a chokehold. Then Lynch blamed Garner for his own death, saying that he “died from a number of bad life choices,” including selling loose cigarettes. As Carl Dix says, “What life choices led to Garner’s being choked to death at the hands of the NYPD? Being born Black in a country where police patrol Black neighborhoods like an occupying army?” (From “Statement from Carl Dix: ‘I challenge Pat Lynch to a debate.’”

Lynch has attacked the New York Civil Liberties Union for creating a smartphone app that lets users record stop-and-frisk encounters and notify other users of nearby police activity. He has said that “disciplinary practices” (in other words, any official action against cops for things like violating people’s constitutional rights) were “beating down morale” with “overly harsh penalties.”

Recently, after former professional tennis player James Blake was assaulted and arrested by an NYPD cop outside a Manhattan hotel—simply because he was a Black man standing on the sidewalk—Lynch said that criticism of the cop for doing this was “irresponsible, unjust and un-American.” Again this made headlines.

The attack on Quentin Tarantino isn’t the first time Lynch has gone after someone in the cultural arena for taking a stand against police murder. In 2000, Lynch (along with then-NY Mayor Giuliani) attacked Bruce Springsteen for his song “American Skin (41 Shots)” about the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea in West Africa, by NYPD cops who fired 41 shots at Amadou. In 2008 Lynch said an art installation by Dread Scott at NYC museum titled The Blue Wall of Violence about police brutality “promotes hate.”

Lynch and other reactionaries like him are defending the right of the police to brutalize and kill people, especially Black and Latino people, and never be questioned for their actions. This is part of the codification in law and culture of the racist, white supremacist treatment of Black and Latino people as LESS THAN HUMAN, to be beaten, arrested and killed by the police just because of the way they look or how they speak.

The fact that these ugly, loudmouth defenders of state-sanctioned murder by the police are given such a media platform reveals that the efforts to expose the reality of this epidemic of police murder—and the people standing up to this and saying NO MORE—is stinging this system. This should serve as a call to redouble our efforts in the struggle to STOP police terror and draw even more people forward into this fight.

 

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