Don Cheadle says he has been stopped by Los Angeles police countless times.
The Oscar-nominated actor, 55, opened up about his experiences with law enforcement during an appearance on “The Tonight Show” on Thursday, saying he has even had “guns put to my head.”
“When I moved to Los Angeles under Daryl Gates and the ‘Hammer program,’” Cheadle told host Jimmy Fallon, referring to the then-LAPD chief of police and the controversial initiative started in 1987 to crack down on gang violence, “I got stopped more times than I can count.”
“I always fit the description,” Cheadle said. “… I used to finish their sentences. They’d go, ‘We’re stopping you because…’ and I’d go, ‘Fit the description. I know.’”
Cheadle continued, “This is something that was happening over and over again. I had good friends that were almost killed by the police for nothing.”
The “House of Lies” actor said that he didn’t have any interaction with police growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri, but that changed when his family moved to the suburbs.
“That’s when a lot of bullying started when I was in school and definitely predicated on race,” Cheadle said. “That’s when, you know, it started to be clear that, yeah, the cops were not on Team Don.” (PageSix)
