#‘The Wire’ star Michael K. Williams supports NYPD reform at city hearing

“The Wire” star Michael K. Williams made a surprise appearance at a City Council hearing Tuesday to pledge his support for reform in the NYPD.

The actor, who grew up in Brooklyn, said the money would be better used toward funding social services benefiting the city’s youth.

“As a young man growing up in the projects of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, I’ve grown accustomed to being over-policed,”  Williams, who is black, told the council’s public safety subcommittee. “I’ve normalized the institutionalization of my friends and my family from school to prison.”

Williams — best known for his “The Wire” character “Omar Little,” who wielded a sawed off shotgun and whistled Elmer Fudd’s ‘a hunting we will go” as he ripped off drug dealers on the mean streets of 1990s Baltimore — is a partner of NYC Together.

He said the not-for-profit youth organization “leverages their strength so they can come up with their own solutions to community-based problems.” The 53-year-old is also widely known for his role as Albert “Chalky” White on “Boardwalk Empire.”

The council’s public safety subcommittee met via Zoom on Tuesday to discuss police reform legislation, including a ban on the use of chokeholds and bills that would require police to display their badge number and protect citizens’ rights to record police activity.

On Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would reallocate an undetermined chunk of NYPD’s budget toward youth groups in wake of growing demands for reform and criticism over the NYPD’s handling of the recent George Floyd protests.