I actually met a cop who worked with street gangs. I wanted to understand what drives someone who deals with very hardened criminals on a daily basis. How do you turn that off when you go home at night?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Maybe it's stress or anger or adrenaline or disillusionment or a bullying nature or simple fear of getting killed themselves, but there is a problem if a cop cannot tell the difference between a menacing gangster and the far more common person they encounter whose life is a little frayed and messy.
Coming up in the Bay Area and being African American in a city that has a history of complex issues of violent crime, interaction with the police is always intense. That's something you have to learn. My mom taught me at a young age that if ever a cop stops you, you put your hands up and freeze - don't move.
In today's YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?
Society questions the police and their methods, and the police say, Do you want the criminals off the street or not?
You are not going to put 100,000 police officers on the streets overnight and do the right job. To put them on the streets, to see that they're properly trained; you have to do it in an orderly way over a period of time.
The most experience I had in the criminology field is playing a thug as an actor. That was my first paid job. The police academy at the college was paying people to reenact the calls that potential cops would get. So I got to play thugs and people who were unruly.
Our people went out every single night trying to stop crime before it happened, trying to take people off the street that they believed were involved in crime. That made us a very aggressive, proactive police department.
I always watched movies and rooted for the bad guys, you know? I've always been that kind of guy. I still hold some respect for criminals that are good at their jobs.
I like to stay within the context of the character's background. If he's a cop, I have to make sure the audience is convinced that this person, a cop, can do only so much without a gun.
I have some cops in my family. I understand the predicament that they're in. Sometimes they go into it just to pay the bills or because they don't have other choices, or sometimes they just want to get the gun.
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