This past Saturday, Quentin Tarantino joined hundreds of New Yorkers in a protest march against police brutality. As it turns out, the police didn’t respond too well to the director’s open stance, and now the largest police union in New York state has called for a boycott of his films.

According to global news agency AFP (Agence France-Presse), Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said in a statement:

It's no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too. It's time for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino's films…The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls 'murderers' aren't living in one of his depraved big screen fantasies -- they're risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem. New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous 'Cop Fiction.’

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Image via The Weinstein Company

The rally, organized by RiseUpOctober, took place in close proximity to the death of New York police officer Randolph Holder, and Tarantino did acknowledge to The New York Post at the time that this was “unfortunate” timing. However, he stood by his ideals. Via Entertainment Weekly, he said at the event:

I’m a human being with a conscience. If you believe there’s murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered.

In a year marked by debates on gun control and excessive force by the police, we’ll have to wait and see whether anyone rallies behind the union’s cause. Tarantino’s last film, Django Unchained, became the director’s highest-grossing film in the U.S. and it went on to score two Oscar wins. We don’t get a new Tarantino film as often as we’d like, and his next one, The Hateful Eight, drummed up high anticipation early on with its first teaser trailer. This is also not the first time someone boycotted one of his films. The one coming from the union just so happens to coincide with a much larger and heated controversy.

The Hateful Eight will hit theaters in limited release on December 25th.

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Image via Miramax