Nick Cannon's children are ''scared of police officers''.

The 39-year-old rapper - who has nine-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe with ex-wife Mariah Carey and three-year-old Golden with former partner Brittany Bell - has revealed his kids view cops as the ''bad guys'' and thinks that has become a major issue for society.

Speaking amid rioting in US cities following the murder of George Floyd, Nick said: ''My kids are scared of police officers. In their minds, they're the bad guys. This is clearly the problem.''

Floyd died on the streets of Minneapolis, and Derek Chauvin, a former officer in the Minneapolis Police Department, has been charged with his murder.

Nick thinks the incident has shone a light on things that have been happening in the US for decades.

He reflected: ''What happened to George Floyd has been going on for years and years.

''Now technology has given us another liberty - to see first-hand what is going on. Now that we can see it we have got to hold them accountable.

''From excessive force to murder - everything we see, we have to hold them accountable - including the so-called good cops standing by allowing this to happen.

''One bad cop isn't acting alone. There are several other bad cops allowing that one to do what he is doing.''

Nick recently travelled to Minneapolis to join racial injustice protests and the former 'America's Got Talent' host felt it was important for him to ''see the people in that community''.

In an essay published by Variety, he shared: ''I had to go to Minneapolis. I needed to be right there on 38th Street and Chicago where George Floyd's life was tragically stolen from him.

''I needed to see the people in that community - how much love they had for their community and their people and how much pain this has caused. We feel the pain go across the world - the anger and the hurt.

''Those visuals will never be removed from our minds.''

Nick hopes the incident in Minneapolis will prove to be a turning point in American history, adding that people are ''searching for a new normal''.

He wrote: ''If you don't step up and say this system has been wrong for years - from the war on drugs to criminalisation of black men in general to the school-to-prison pipeline to the prison industrial complex. It's a form of modern-day slavery.

''There are more black men in jail today then there were enslaved [in the 19th century]. These are concepts that people overlook daily.''