LL Cool J says there needs to be a "different approach" to stop police brutality
LL Cool J has spoken out about the changes needed to help stop police brutality in a new interview.
Protests were sparked around the world earlier this summer following the death of George Floyd while in police custody. Last week (August 23), Jacob Blake was shot several times by authorities but survived. According to a report published by Newsweek, there were only three days before August 25 where police hadn’t killed someone in 2020.
The rapper said law enforcement departments had to “do something different” when vetting potential police officers to help stop police brutality. “The bar of ‘I fear for my life’ is too subjective,” he told Rolling Stone. “We got to get a different system in place for vetting, better education, more psychological evaluations, a deeper background check so that we really know who is doing the policing.”
He continued: “People that are from the community or are closer to the community need to be in these communities. There has to be a different approach. Because this unjust killing of people because someone says they’re scared, when we know that it’s that bullshit, it just has to stop.”
LL Cool J added that the police were there to “protect and serve everybody”, not “protect some and kill others”. “This idea that every black man or woman is treated like a villain has got to go,” he said. “People of colour should not be treated like villains.”
Other stars have joined the rapper in speaking out against police brutality in recent months, including Alicia Keys, who condemned police violence in her recent song ‘Perfect Way To Die’.
“Of course there is no perfect way to die,” Keys said of the song upon its release in June. ‘This phrase doesn’t even make sense but that’s what makes the title so powerful and heartbreaking because so many have died unjustly.
“It’s written from the point of view of the mother whose child has been murdered because of the system of racism that looks at Black life as unworthy. We all know none of these innocent lives should have been taken due to the culture of police violence.”
