Morgan Freeman is one of the few iconic Hollywood actors speaking out against ‘woke’ ideologies and the movement to defund the police. Freeman shared that while he does recognize the need to address police violence in Black communities, he said he rejects the idea of defunding the police and that law enforcement is “very necessary” today. Freeman shared his views about the Defund the Police movement in a recent interview with Black Enterprise. He has been promoting his newest film, “The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain,” which he is the executive producer of. The film is about a police killing of an elderly Black veteran.
“I’m not in the least bit for defunding the police. 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 who would never pull their guns except in a range, that sort of thing. I don’t know,” Freeman said.
Others have also shared that they believe Hollywood actors are treated “much differently by police” and that they just want the police to treat people equally rather than defund them. Freeman said the past year in the country “sums it up” that they need to equip officers with better training, but that he does not believe they should be defunded.
Black Enterprise magazine’s Selena Hill went so far as to blame Freeman’s response on the “movement’s struggle to educate certain parts of our community about what the phrase actually means.”
Hill went on to say that she is an avid support of defunding the police, as well as ideas behind the Abolish The Police movement, but that the interview “further affirms” that the terminology they use is polarizing. She said it prohibits the movement from garnering more support. Typical Dem move – When you disagree with something, you have to be “educated” on it until you learn to think as they do.
But Freeman has donated a million dollars in a project to train police officers for community engagement at the University of Mississippi back in June. The funds helped establish the Center for Evidence-Based Policing and Reform, which would be a way to train police forces to better engage with the community in crime prevention and conflict resolution. He said they can educate and train the officers without redistributing or transferring the funds to any other social justice or welfare programs.
While Freeman does carry a more liberal approach to coronavirus vaccinations and mask mandates, he has shown his support for the police in the past. He even stopped to take a picture with two Albuquerque police officers back in 2016 while shooting his movie, “Villa Capri.”
There’s only a small number of people supporting the defund the police movement, as more people want funding to give better training and a better selection of officers. Law enforcement has never been the problem, the lawbreakers are.
