Ving Rhames is going public about a harrowing encounter with law enforcement he said happened earlier this year after a neighbor called police on the “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” star as he was entering his own home.
The incident, Rhames explained on “The Clay Cane Show” July 27, happened at his home in Santa Monica, Calif, which he said he walked into wearing only basketball shorts.
“I get up, I open the door, there’s a red dot pointed at my face from a 9-millimeter [gun], and they say, ‘Put up your hands.’ Literally,” he says. “It was a police officer with a 9 mm pointed at me, one officer behind him and two, I believe it was [to] the left of me was the captain of police [department], and another officer with a police dog. I get out and [one of the officers] recognized me.”
The actor got an apology and asked why the officers showed up. He was told a woman called 911 and said, “a large Black man” was breaking into the house. But the neighbor denied it when Rhames and the officer went to ask about it.
But the star still had an issue when it came to the safety of his high-school-aged son.
“My problem is, as I said to them, what if it was my son and he had a video-game remote or something, and you thought it was a gun? Just like Trayvon [Martin] had a bag of Skittles,” Rhames says.
On Saturday, the Santa Monica Police Department released a statement on the incident, which it reports happened in 2016. It said that as a result of the misreported burglary, it launched the “Meet Your Neighbors” community program “designed to encourage neighbors to step out of their comfort zones and get to know each other over coffee, ice cream or block party. The Santa Monica Police Department encourages neighbors to become familiar with each other to avoid similar situations.”
Meanwhile, folks online have been weighing in on the racial profiling episode.
“This is getting ridiculous. Plus, the guy is famous. Wow.”
“And then the chickens–t neighbor denied it.”
“F— y’all Ving Rhames is a national treasure and I hate this earth.”
