Even Black A-List celebrities like Don Cheadle aren’t above police brutality.
The actor appeared on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon and spoke about his experience with the police after moving to a predominantly white suburban neighborhood.
“That was when a lot of bullying started when I was at school, and it definitely predicated on race,” Cheadle said. “That’s when it started to be clear that the cops were not on ‘Team Don’ and there was a different treatment.”
Cheadle referenced a 1987 policy called Operation Hammer which was aimed at allegedly curb gang violence.
“I don’t know if it was officially coined that it was to stop and harass Black and Brown people, but that was the sort of unofficial official interdepartmental language that they used for the Hammer Program, what it was for and what it was designed to do — to intimidate and to make sure everybody knew who was really running things in L.A.,” he explained.
“I got stopped more times than I can count and guns put to my head…I always fit the description,” he added.
The veteran actor acknowledged that police brutality is not new, but changes are being made thanks to the undeniable video footage of these tragic incidents.
“I have good friends who were almost killed by the police for nothing,” he said. “So this is not something that was new to me once all of these videos started to come out. This was something that we knew very well was happening, they just weren’t being filmed.”
Check out the full interview with Don Cheadle below:
