Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Tituss Burgess recalls being stopped and followed by police

‘They had some strange, insatiable appetite to make some human beings feel less than’

Actor Tituss Burgess has recalled his own experiences of being followed by police for no reason.

As many US actors speak out about being racially profiled by police following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star told Sirius XM about a time officers followed him for four blocks.

“They crossed the road [on foot] to cut me off,” Burgess explained. “I just paused a bit to give them some distance. It was clear that they wanted to exert some bizarre brawn or force. They had some strange, insatiable appetite to make some human beings feel less than.”

The singer and actor continued: “I was so bothered by the gesture. It is as if there are certain people who work in law enforcement who feel that… your natural existence, defies them.”

With Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the United States as campaigners call for changes to the ways in which police treat black people, a number of black actors have shared their own experiences of racism.

Last week, actor Don Cheadle told Jimmy Fallon about the moment he realised the police were “not on Team Don”, saying: “The rules of just how to make sure you can come home and be safe and what you had to do unfortunately was something that was put into our minds very early.”

He continued: “We would get stopped, I mean I got stopped more times than I can count, guns put to my head. I always ‘fit the description’. This is something that was happening over and over again. I had good friends that were almost killed by the police for nothing.”