“Hip-Hop Cops”: Fact Or <s>Fiction</s> Fact Everyone In Power Lies About?

Aside from persistent complaints/cover stories on the part of the rap community and Chamillionaire’s beloved-by-TRL video spoof, the “hip-hop police,” a squad devoted to tracking the movements of rappers–a profession which at some point got conflated with “suspected criminals” by police departments nationwide–have remained one of those rumors officials can dismiss with a “where’s the proof?” wave of the hand. Village Voice writer Adam Matthews documents one run-in between suspected hip-hop cops and an “anonymous rapper,” capturing a little of the commonplace harassment, organizational incompetence, and frustrating “blue wall” silence that now characterizes the shady relationship between law enforcement and hip-hop stars:

It was a rare treat when members of the phantom unit materialized outside the West Village club S.O.B.’s on September 18. After a concert thrown by AllHipHop.com, two men in their thirties accosted an up-and-coming rapper and told him to come with them. When he resisted, he says, the men–one white, one black–flashed badges and identified themselves as members of the “hip-hop police.” They interrogated the rapper outside the venue. “It really bugged me out,” says the rapper, who requested anonymity. “There was no possible way [they] could know certain details unless they were in the VIP section.” When the rapper began to talk back, he says, the undercover Hip-Hop Cops advised his manager to quickly put him in a cab. The manager complied. When the rapper returned home, he adds, he noticed a black car with tinted windows outside his apartment.

Unfortunately, if not suprisingly, no one within the NYPD would go on record for Matthews about either the specific incident, which took place on Sept. 18, or the hip-hop squad itself, and the closest he gets to confirmation of its existence comes from Remy Ma’s lawyer and a retired cop:

This makes sense, according to retired NYPD detective Derrick Parker, who founded the unit and later wrote a book, The Notorious C.O.P., that outed it. Parker says that before any major hip-hop event, the Hip-Hop Cops devise a game plan. “They had to do it for 50’s [recent] five-borough tour,” recalls Parker. “They were doing the surveillance and pre-op plan.”

And even more than the Nixon-era rubbishing of civil liberties, the frustrating part, as Matthews notes, is that “how effective the Hip-Hop Cops are is another matter,” since they missed an actual brawl at the same club by only a day.

The Hip-Hop Cops Materialize In The West Village [Village Voice]