Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. is championing a new campaign to offer police officials counseling – because he thinks it will cut down on corruption in the force.
The actor plays a cop-gone-bad in harrowing new film Dirty and admits he now has an idea of what makes good cops stray.
He says, “When you have police officers who are not given psychoanalysis and mental support for what they go through, that’s tough. They’re expected to get all of this in a matter of months of training?
“In observing the day to day ritual of these police officers, they’re exposed to a lot of negativity. At some point there has to be a check and balances. How did they get this far down the road with that frame of mind and what can we do to pull it back?
“I had a buddy of mine who was moving out of an apartment and he needed me to come help him move his furniture. His roommate was a sheriff and when he saw us he told my buddy, ‘I don’t want any black people at my house.’
“My friend told me he had developed a hatred for blacks and Hispanics during his training because he spent three years as a prison guard and had seen the worst of blacks and Hispanics and that caused distrust.
“If we’re training and psychologically exposing these men to a certain mindset that negative racial experience has to be put into context when we’re considering their relations with civilians and how they deal with gang violence.”
Article Copyright World Entertainment News Network All Rights Reserved.
