Dennis Haysbert Says Police Violence ‘Is Sanctioned by the General Public’

TCA 2016: ‘Undercover’ star says experience of living as a black man in U.S. is “more negative” than it is in U.K.

Dennis Haysbert
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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.

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