An upcoming screening of the 1990 movie “Kindergarten Cop” has been canceled in Oregon amid concerns about the “current political climate,” according to the Willamette Week. The film was scheduled to kick off the NW Film Center’s Cinema Unbound, a summer-drive-in movie series in Portland, on Thursday.
Organizers said “Kindergarten Cop,” which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a police detective who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher, was chosen for “its importance in Oregon filmmaking history.” The film, shot in Astoria, Oregon, is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
“National reckoning on overpolicing is a weird time to revive Kindergarten Cop. IRL, we are trying to end the school-to-prison pipeline,” she tweeted. “There’s nothing entertaining about the presence of police in schools, which feeds the ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline in which African American, Latinx and other kids of color are criminalized rather than educated. Five- and 6-year-olds are handcuffed and hauled off to jail routinely in this country. And this criminalizing of children increases dramatically when cops are assigned to work in schools.” – Portland author Lois Leveen
It should be noted that Schwarzenegger’s character in Kindergarten Cop, John Kimble, is not a school resource officer. Rather, he’s a detective working undercover to catch a drug kingpin whose ex-wife and son live in Astoria.
The John Lewis “Good Trouble” documentary will be shown instead.
