On Thursday’s edition of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” comedian and host of HBO’s “Real Time,” Bill Maher, discusses last week’s police brutality incidents and the Dallas shooting in which five officers were killed.
The comedian begins the interview by saying that our society needs cops because people need order and stability to prevent all-out chaos.
However, he states that he understands the outrage of police brutality. Maher believes that police culture must change.
“Obviously, anytime someone shoots a policeman, it’s just abhorrent, and there’s no and, ifs or buts about it, so I don’t condone it. But I understand it. I mean, you can only look at so many videos of shooting unarmed Black people. I’m surprised it didn’t actually happen before,” Maher says.
The comedian minces no words and compares the police to the priesthood.
“They attract the wrong kinds of people sometimes. I think there’s a lot of people who go into police work because they were the person who, when they were young, they had no authority, they were kind of losers and and now they want to have the ability to lord it over people. The police department cannot be revenge for high school,” Maher explains.
Maher says that some people get into the profession for the wrong reasons and the videos show that:
“… I’ve seen enough videos to know that there are too many cops that act like that. I mean, any is too many. And yes, I think that’s the type of person that goes into police work. And by the way, you can eliminate that. There are psychology tests that you can take: Why do you want to be policemen?”
“It is a difficult job… that you volunteered for,” Maher points out.
