NEW YORK (AP) — Academy Award-winning filmmaker Quentin Tarantino joined hundreds of demonstrators waving signs, shouting through megaphones and marching along the city's streets on Saturday to protest police brutality nationwide. 
 
 A demonstrator holds his hands in the air during a rally to protest against police brutality Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015, in New York. Speakers at the protest said they want to bring justice for those who... (Associated Press) 
 
 Marion Gray-Hopkins, speaks about the death of her son, Gary Hopkins Jr. in 1999, during a rally to protest against police brutality Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) (Associated Press) 
 
 Demonstrators participate in rally against police brutality at Washington Square park in New York, Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015. Speakers at the protest said they want to bring justice for those who were killed... (Associated Press) 
 
 Director Quentin Tarantino, center, participates in a rally to protest against police brutality Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015, in New York. Speakers at the protest said they want to bring justice for those... (Associated Press) 
 
 Demonstrators chant slogans during a rally to protest against police brutality Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015, in New York. Speakers at the protest said they want to bring justice for those who were killed by... (Associated Press) 
 
 Dr. Cornel West, right, participates in a rally in New York against violence by police on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015. Hundreds marched up Sixth Avenue. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison) (Associated Press) 
 
 "I'm a human being with a conscience," said Tarantino, who flew in from California for the event. "And 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." 
 
 The group gathered Saturday in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood at Washington Square Park before marching about 2 miles along Sixth Avenue. The protesters walked past lines of police officers who had cordoned off a lane of traffic for them. As they moved, those with megaphones shouted stories of the slain as others waved signs with photos of the dead, mostly young black men, and the dates and places of their deaths. 
 
 The event was the last of three demonstrations the group RiseUpOctober organized in New York this week. Speakers at the protest said they want to bring justice for people killed by police. 
 
 Temako Williams walked arm in arm with academic and activist Cornel West, one of the organizers. Her son, La-Reko Williams, was killed by police in 2011 in Charlotte, North Carolina. A federal jury ruled that a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer, who did not face criminal charges, had used excessive force, and it awarded her $500,000. 
 
 But, she said, the money is no substitute for justice. 
 
 "It wasn't worth the price of my son's life," she said. "It's a wound that won't heal." 
 
 While police were present all along the protest route, the day was peaceful. No arrests were reported. 
 
 The protest came at a time of heightened awareness nationwide of the oft-contentious relationship between police officers and the people they serve. New York's mayor and police commissioner have said they're serious about enacting smart reforms to build trust between police and communities. 
 
 But the protest also was days after a New York police officer, Randolph Holder, was shot to death while chasing a bicycle thief. A suspect has been charged with murder and robbery in the case. 
 
 The Rev. Al Sharpton dedicated his weekly radio broadcast and rally at his National Action Network headquarters to Holder. Sharpton and others went to the Brooklyn neighborhood where Holder served to lay a wreath and pray for him and his family. 
 
 Activist Carl Dix, who helped found RiseUpOctober with West, said that while he sympathized with Holder's family the officer's death did not affect the need to hold Saturday's rally as scheduled. 
 
 "That's not what this is about," Dix said. "This is about all the people who are murdered by the police." ||||| The city’s police union is calling for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino films after the “Pulp Fiction’’ director took part in an anti-cop rally less than a week after an officer was killed on the job. 
 
 “When I see murders, I do not stand by . . . I have to call the murderers the murderers,” the director — notorious for his violent movies — told a crowd of protesters in Washington Square Park on Saturday, adding that cops are too often “murderers.” 
 
 Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, lashed out against the “Reservoir Dogs” auteur Sunday. 
 
 “It’s no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too,” Lynch said in a statement. 
 
 “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.’ ” 
 
 Tarantino acknowledged Saturday that the timing of the rally was “unfortunate.” But he said people had already traveled to be a part of the gathering. 
 
 Relatives of Police Officer Randolph Holder, who was killed in East Harlem Tuesday night, were far from appeased. 
 
 “I think it’s very disrespectful,” his cousin Shauntel Abrams, 27, said of the protest as she and other relatives gathered at the Church of the Nazarene in Far Rockaway ahead of Holder’s funeral Wednesday. 
 
 “Everyone forgets that behind the uniform is a person.” 
 
 Meanwhile, retired Police Officer John Mangan, who used to work at PSA 5, where Holder had been stationed, took to the streets on Sunday with a sign reading, “God bless the NYPD,” for a one-man march. 
 
 He walked the 7¹/₂ miles from the East Harlem station house to City Hall in a show of support for the fallen cop.
– NYPD Officer Randolph Holder was shot dead Tuesday, and by Saturday Quentin Tarantino was in Washington Square Park, protesting "murderers"—not the ones going after cops, but the cops themselves. "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," Tarantino said during the "Rise Up October" rally, per the New York Post, adding too often it is cops who kill. The head of the NYPD's labor union wasn't impressed and responded by asking locals to boycott the director's films, including the upcoming Hateful Eight. "It's no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too," Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said in a statement, via the Post. "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.'" About 300 people gathered for the rally, chanting and holding up signs that said things like "Rise Up! Stop Police Terror!" and "Murder with a badge is still murder." Tarantino concedes that the timing so soon after Holder's killing was "unfortunate," but he also says people had already traveled to attend, the Post notes. "I'm a human being with a conscience," Tarantino says, per the AP. "And if you believe there's murder going on, then you need to rise up and stand up against it. … I'm on the side of the murdered." Not everyone sees it that way. "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," Lynch continues in his statement. One of Holder's cousins tells the Post that the rally was "very disrespectful." "Everyone forgets that behind the uniform is a person," she says.