Famed Black actor and producer Morgan Freeman has come out to denounce efforts to defund the police.
“I am not in the least bit for defunding the police,” Freeman told Black Enterprise’s Selena Hill, a self-described supporter for the defund the police movement, in an interview posted on Instagram.
“Police work is, aside from all the negativity around it, it is very necessary for us to have them and most of them are guys that are doing their job. They’re going about their day-to-day jobs.
“There are some police that would never pull their guns except in range, that sort of thing.”
Freeman’s film “The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain” details the true 2011 story of a former Marine with bipolar disorder who was killed by police after accidentally triggering his medical alert device, leading to a confrontation with police that led to his death.
“I’m Black,” Freeman told The Associated Press last month. “People don’t seem to recognize that. Being so, and raised in the south, I watched the impunity in which Black men, young men, had been killed by law enforcement – quote.”
Freeman, who said he is not treated like an everyday Black man because of his celebrity status, has helped start a program at the University of Mississippi to enter for Evidence-Based Policing and Reform.
Actor Frankie Faison, who plays Chamberlain in the film, echoed Freeman’s remarks on reforming the police instead of defunding them.
“Well, I agree with Morgan,” Faison told Hill. “I’m certainly not in favor of defunding the policemen.”
Freeman lamented to AP that America historically “kicking the can down the road” on policing, “it’s sort of what we do.”
“If we don’t start something now, it’s like everything else, it just sort of rolls along,” Freeman told AP.
“We’ve got to get much busier.”
