The American public has “sanctioned” police violence by not acting to curb it, according to actor Dennis Haysbert.
The star of the upcoming BBC America series “Underground” — which takes place in London and Louisiana — contrasted his experience as a black man in the United States with his experience in England.
“I don’t experience there what I experience here — here being the more negative,” Haysbert said Friday at a Television Critics Association panel. “I look at Facebook a fair bit. I see what’s posted. I see the travesties and illegalities of what police forces do. And I also see and understand that it is sanctioned by the general public — or we would do something.”
Haysbert then described seeing a video posted online in which a crowd at a British soccer game chased off police officers beating a black man.
“You would never see that [in the U.S.],” he added.
In “Undercover,” Haysbert plays a wrongly imprisoned man who has been sitting on death row for 20 years.
The series premieres this spring on BBC America.