Bill Maher Compares Police to Priests: "They Attract the Wrong Kind of People"

Bill Maher compared police to priests on Stephen Colbert's 'Late Show,’ saying, "They attract the wrong kind of people."

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

Stephen Colbert welcomed Real Time host and recent Emmy nominee Bill Maher to Thursday's Late Show, engaging him in an impassioned discussion on the country's violence-prone police culture. Though Colbert and Maher clearly have some religious disagreements, the two titans of late-night touched on many facets of the police brutality discussion that other talking heads have routinely ignored.

"Without police on the job, you know that movie The Purge? It would be that every day without the police," Maher told Colbert, saying that his criticisms of the so-called "police culture" were not aimed at every officer. Referencing the recent "abhorrent" murder of 5 officers in Dallas during a peaceful anti-police brutality protest, Maher theorized that it was only a matter of time before violence inspired further violence.

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

"I don't condone it but I understand it," Maher said. "You can only look at so many videos of [police] shooting unarmed black people. I'm surprised it actually didn't happen before." Maher said his years of speaking out about police brutality have taught him that the culture surrounding many departments is sadly conducive to similarly violent behavior.

"The police [are] kinda like the priesthood," Maher said. "They attract the wrong kind 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 they want to have the ability to lord it over people." According to Maher, the police department "cannot be revenge for high school."

Latest in Pop Culture