‘The Flash’ Star Candice Patton on Ferguson, NY Protests: ‘Everyone Deserves to Have Their Voice Heard’ (Video)

The CW actress describes the protests as a wake up call in new episode of TheWrap’s “Drinking With the Stars”

Candice Patton who co-stars on The CW series “The Flash” is the latest actor to weigh in on protests sweeping the nation over the police killings of unarmed African-Americans.

“Everyone deserves to have their voice heard. These protests are nothing more than that — just people getting out and saying ‘we’ve had enough,” Patton said Monday during a new episode of TheWrap’s “Drinking With the Stars.”

Over the past few weeks, protesters have taken to the streets in cities across the country to speak out against excessive police force. Among the recent incidents that sparked the mass gatherings — the Nov. 24 decision by a St. Louis County grand jury not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Then on Dec. 3, a Staten Island grand jury voted to end the criminal case against NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, who died after being put in a police chokehold last July. That decision touched off another wave of protests and the rallying cry “I can’t breath.”

Around the same time that those decisions were handed down, a rookie NYPD officer shot and killed Akai Gurley on Nov. 20, in a public housing stairwell in Brooklyn.

Then on Nov. 22, a Cleveland Police officer fatally shot Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy carrying a toy gun. The officer was responding to a call of a “young black male” brandishing a gun in a city park, when he shot Rice.

This latest wave of police killings inspired the chants “We are all Akai Gurley” and “From Ferguson to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”

When asked her opinion on the deadly incidents, Patton said they are “horrifying,” then described the protests that followed as a wake up call about race in America.

“We would be silly to say that race issues don’t exist in 2014,” she said.

See video of TheWrap’s interview with Candice Patton.

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