Director Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly one of the most influential and innovative filmmakers of his generation. Possibly of all-time. When it comes to Tarantino as a person, what you see is what you get. The Academy Award-winner isn’t afraid of saying or doing things that’ll piss people off.

Whether it’s getting called out by Spike Lee for the excessive usage of racial slurs in his films, or more recently where he made some passionate comments about his views on police brutality, Tarantino is no stranger to controversy.

While speaking at the RiseUpOctober protest in New York City’s Washington Square Park on Oct. 24, Tarantino made the following remarks regarding police brutality.

“This is not being dealt with in any way at all,” Tarantino said. “That’s why we are out here. If it was being dealt with, then these murdering cops would be in jail or at least be facing charges… 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.”

In response to his comments, the New York Police Department officer union had called for a citywide boycott of Tarantino’s films, with his highly anticipated western film “The Hateful Eight” set to release on Christmas Day. As of Oct. 28, the Los Angeles Police Department patrolmen’s union, has also joined the boycott of director’s films.

“We fully support this boycott of Quentin Tarantino films,” said Los Angeles Police Protective League president Craig Lally said in a statement. “Hateful rhetoric dehumanizes police and encourages attacks on us. And questioning everything we do threatens public safety by discouraging officers from putting themselves in positions where their legitimate actions could be falsely portrayed as thuggery.”

In his first public statement since his comments at the rally, Tarantino did’t seem to care about the threats of boycotts despite coming under fire. In the L.A. Times interview he claimed that he is “not being intimidated” by the police departments.

“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,” Tarantino said. “And their message is 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.”

While the timing of his comments, as well as the backlash to them, is unfortunate in relation to his latest film due to be released soon, his comments are very much relevant. In a time where police brutality is unfortunately becoming a common occurrence, Tarantino’s comments bring up an issue that possibly begs more attention in discussions. Where in almost every police brutality incident that involves the death of a human being, the officer is defended despite the fact they murdered someone. Tarantino doesn’t shy away from calling a cop who committed murder, a murderer. However his comments were taken out of context to the point of it coming off as he was generalizing police officers as a murderous group of individuals.

“All cops are not murderers,” Tarantino also said during an L.A. Times interview. “I never said that. I never even implied that.”

This is the classic case of yellow journalism in media, as Tarantino has made aware. The director is the latest victim of a backlash he likely doesn’t entirely deserve, due to comments he made that, in reality, are not inaccurate by any means. When one person kills another, it is murder. However as recent history as shown, the term murderer hasn’t seemed to apply to officers of the law when they kill another person.

This isn’t to say all cops are murderers, like Tarantino stated. Yet it’s strange when an unarmed, good-intentioned man like Walter Scott is shot to death despite being innocent, versus a domestic terrorist like Dylann Roof who is escorted into police custody despite being armed and having admittedly murdered members of a local church in the hours prior.

It’s actions like these that cause people like Tarantino, who are sick of it, to speak out in the manner that they do. If it was possible, people would boycott police departments. This reaction to comments made by a Hollywood director, is merely an unnecessary overreaction. Then again, what isn’t nowadays?