Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman is taking a swipe at the “Defund the Police” crowd, saying he’s “not in the least bit” supportive of a movement that seeks to strip money from law enforcement who are just “doing their job.”
"I’m not in the least bit for defunding the police,” Freeman told Black Enterprise magazine’s Selena Hill in an interview discussing hislatest film, The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain. “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 the never pulled their guns except in rage, that sort of thing. I don’t know.”
The new movie is based on a true story about the death of an elderly black veteran who was shot by police in 2011. According to police at the time, they were alerted to Chamberlain’s home after his medical alert necklace went off accidentally. Authorities claimed that after arriving at his home and breaking down his door to gain access, Chamberlain charged at police with a knife before being shot.
Frankie Faison, Freeman’s co-star in the film, agreed that he doesn’t think the police should be “defunded.”
“I’m certainly not in favor of defunding the policemen,” Faison said.
Hill, who actively supports defunding the police, posted the quote in a lengthy missive on Instagram, saying that Freeman’s support for the police is simply a “reflection of the [Defund the Police’s] movement’s struggle to educate certain parts of our community about what the phrase actually means.”
“To be clear, I’m an avid supporter of defunding police and the ideas behind the #AbolishThePolice movement,” she wrote. “However, this interview further affirms that the terminology we’re using to describe the reallocation of police funding to other community-based services is polarizing and prohibits the movement from garnering more support.”
While we’re speaking about education, perhaps someone should education Hill that when you use terms like “abolish the police,” people usually assume you actually mean, well, abolishing the police.
(Cover Photo: Nathan Congleton)