Ving Rhames says Santa Monica police officers held him at gunpoint in his own home, after a neighbor called to report “a large Black man” had broken in.
The Mission: Impossible — Fallout star recalled the incident Friday when he was asked about racism during an appearance on SiriusXM’s Clay Cane Show.
Rhames said he was watching ESPN when he heard a knock on his front door.
“I get up, I open the door and there’s a red dot pointed at my face from a 9-millimeter, and they say, ‘Put up your hands.’ Literally,” he explained.
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Rhames added that there were three officers, a police dog and a captain who recognized him because their sons play basketball together.
“They recognized me and apologized, and I said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ He said to me, ‘A woman called 911 and said a large Black man was breaking into the house,'” he recalled.
The actor went on to say the neighbor who reportedly made the call denied it when he went to her house with a police officer and the police chief by his side.
“My problem is, what if it was my son and he had a video game remote or something and [the police] thought it was a gun just like Trayvon [Martin] had a bag of Skittles?” he continued.
A Santa Monica Police Department lieutenant confirmed to People magazine that the incident occurred in July 2016.
“We got a call from several neighbors indicating that they thought what they were looking at was a burglary in the home and we responded within minutes,” Lt. Saul Rodriguez told the outlet. “As soon as we discovered it was Mr. Rhames, we de-escalated immediately and informed him what happened.”
The magazine pressed Rodriguez as to why officers responded with their guns drawn.
“Burglaries can sometimes be violent,” Rodriguez said. “Officers can be very cautious.”
The police spokesman added that a similar incident happened months later, involving a Black woman who lost her keys.
The department has since launched a community program called “Meet Your Neighbors,” which urges residents to “step outside of their comfort zone and get to know the people on their block” through social gatherings such as block parties.
Santa Monica is 67 percent white, while about 4 percent of its 90,000 residents are Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The median household income in the beachfront community is just over $109,000.
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