Village Voice: NYPD Admits to Hip Hop Intelligence Unit

Today's Village Voice unleashes a bombshell today sure to reverberate through the music world and African American and latino culture. Apparently, the NYPD lied when the consistently denied, in the press, the existence of a surveillance of those in the hip hop community. This is, of course, utter and complete bullshit, as anyone who has ever seen the dark unmarked detective cars surveilling hip hop tour busses as they line up outside of Sony Music Studios on West 54th street knows.

Dasun Allah of the Voice writes:

"While earlier this week the department acknowledged consulting with Miami authorities, over the years the police brass have consistently denied that there is a team keeping tabs on rap stars and their entourages. A two-month investigation into the existence of such an intelligence squad produced revelations from a retired detective who says he was its founder and architect, and an admission from the NYPD that indeed there are officers assigned to do surveillance on people in and around the hiphop music scene."

He continues:

"'We have an intelligence division and we have detectives that monitor the music industry and any incidents regarding the music industry,'says Officer Doris Garcia, an NYPD spokesperson. 'And in regards to Miami P.D. we did exchange information, and that�s it.'"

Glad to see that under Bloomberg there is a certain frankness emerging out of the NYPD in our democracy, but still, this does not excuse the fact that the police, up until now, and only under direct questioning, out and out lied. And further, they are profiling an industry that is disportionately African American and Latino, which is fucked up.

Dasun Allah goes on:

"Hiphop music and fashion titan Russell Simmons thinks that the NYPD needs to contend with more serious concerns surveillance of rap stars, and questions their utilization of resources. 'They don�t follow around every rock and roll outlaw. They should be following around all these drug dealers that are real obvious,' he says. 'You know who the drug dealers are. You know all of their names. Why are you wasting your police force energy on singers?'"

Oh come on, Russell, you know the cops follow Kid Rock and Alanis Morrissette, you know they do. Uh, don't they?

Read the VV article here.

(Update: a wise reader of the Velvet Rope forums named platinumhussy reminded me that the police used to surveil punk rock clubs, so this is not a new "racial" phenomenon in social science. Do the police have a right to this manner of surveiling? I don't know. Were they wrong in lying about the existence of the unit? I still believe so.)

due to work constraints, The Corsair won't be blogging anything new tommorrow. Sorry