The more I see and hear from this man, the more I like him:
“I was very optimistic. I was very optimistic about, you know, at the horror of what happened after the death of George Floyd. I became optimistic when I saw so many people get it. It was the same thing that happens during the Civil Rights Movement and people saw on television that what happened on Edmund Pettus Bridge what happened with Bull Connor, what happened in all these moments when people saw it, when white people saw it, they got engaged. They wanted to help.”
“But lately, I’ve been very, very concerned that the message is being hijacked by some other groups or political ads and parties that are trying to stop the message of what we’re asking for here is police reform. Right. So yes, I was but I’m worried now is because of what I’m seeing.”
“I’m not for taking money for the police department.”. “I think we need more police. My studio is in a neighborhood where I think we need police, but we don’t need police… that are under-trained. And you got to understand, I have really close friends who are police officers that I love dearly who are really good people, who have been very, very hurt by this as well.”
“I think we need the police. I know that I need the police. I have several that worked for me here at the studio. We need them, but we need them reformed. We need them trained. Well, we need the right structure.”
“But some of the things inside of the ‘defund the police’ [movement] I really understand, like having officers who are clinically trained to deal with certain situations – I think all of those things are helpful. But taking money from the police department to make the police department smaller, that troubles me.”
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 25 year veteran of the fast-paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in a number of hit broadway and off-broadway musicals including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. In addition, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.