#8: Jamie Foxx
Foxx is another one of those celebrities who has all the answers from atop his ivory castle. Where Ferguson is concerned, Foxx thinks the shooting could have been avoided if officers simply went to speak with Brown’s parents instead of confronting him on the street. I want to ask Foxx if these are the kinds of tactics he’ll be taking as Detective Ricardo Tubbs if they ever bring back Miami Vice for a sequel – you know, rather than shoot first and ask questions later without the annoyance of paperwork or investigations into the actions taken. Foxx has also been known to wax poetically on race relations while sitting courtside at NBA games. Recently, he took a moment away from rubbing elbows with other celebrities and giving high fives to the players on the court to say that American society views the lives of blacks as less valuable than whites. These beliefs are why he was so supportive of Quentin Tarentino when the director stepped down from his own ivory tower to march with BLM and proclaim that cops are murderers. Despite all this, Foxx accepted a paycheck this year to play the role of a Las Vegas cop in the film Sleepless – a film I won’t be seeing.
#7: LL Cool J
James Todd Smith – also known as LL Cool J – burst onto the scene in 1990 with his hit song Mama said Knock You Out. It was a simpler time before the Gangsta Rap genre left its ugly stain on society by poisoning the well for entire generations of young black American males with romanticized black on black violence and police targeting.
Although it did not lyrically advocate violence, LL came out with Illegal Search the same year. The song portrayed police officers as a jealous and spiteful group trying to hold him down by planting evidence, illegally searching his car, intimidating him, and locking him up simply because he was a successful black male. While spite and jealousy are a human character flaw present in us all, I have never felt them in my job nor used them as a driver for investigating any single person. LL Cool J has abandoned his Hip-Hop career to play a police officer on NCIS: LA and Hawaii Five-O. He also played an officer alongside Samuel L. Jackson – another dishonorable on this list – in the movie S.W.A.T. LL Cool J was quick to defend Beyoncé’s halftime show at Superbowl 50 which featured a performance of her song Formation. Of course, the performance paid tribute to the militant Black Panther Party and Black Lives Matter.
#6: Samuel L Jackson
Sam Jackson has been happy to play everything from a hostage negotiator to a uniformed LAPD officer and more. Who can forget about his 1971 genre-creating role as Shaft? Whether one views the 1970’s Blaxploitation genre as empowering to black Americans or as a propagator of stereotypes against them, Sammy J is arguably the first Blaxploitation star in the history of cinema. Nevertheless, Jackson – made famous for playing the role of a lawman on several occasions – has been as vocally anti-police as anyone on this list. He attempted to start a viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge-style internet trend to call out racist white police officers in 2014. Thankfully, it didn’t catch on.
#5: Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre, also known as Andre Young, is the second founding member of NWA on the list to say “F- the police!”, when he’s not collecting a paycheck playing one. Aside from merely rapping about being the anti-hero, the bad guy – Young has a real track record for violence against women. The physical assault charges he’s faced over the year aren’t simply related to domestic violence either. Young has had a real problem keeping his hands off women that anger him outside of intimate relationships as well. Not to be outdone by Ice Cube in the anti-police arena, Dr. Dre once led police officers on a high-speed pursuit in Beverly Hills and plead guilty to battery charges against a police officer in New Orleans. Young played Detective Paul in the film Training Day in 2001.
#4: 50 Cent
Curtis Jackson is the perfect example of how messed up our society is in the way it deals with Hip-Hop culture. As a young rapper whose career was going nowhere, Jackson wrote a song in early 2000 that detailed the lives of real life drug dealer in Queens, NY during the 1980’s. Real gangsters got angry and he wound up shot 9 times but would survive. Cops call it “perp luck”, and 50 Cent was born.
In the rap game, you can go from obscurity to mega-fame overnight. Despite having a movie and video game based on his being the wrong end of the gun of a thug, and relying on police protection everywhere he goes, 50 likes to talk about police brutality from the perch he sits. In one Instagram post, Jackson went on to say that his first reaction to seeing a police officer was shot on CNN was, “Good.” We’re talking about a guy who, rather than wish his son a happy birthday on Twitter, publicly counts down the days to when he will no longer have to pay child support. Not only has Jackson made some of that child support money playing a cop who kills other cops in the 2012 film Freelancers, he is the Executive Producer of the upcoming drama The Oath, that will be all about “police gangs” as if that’s a real thing.
