Earlier this week, Cardi B said that a New York City police officer put her in an illegal choke hold and slammed her against an SUV. But now a spokesman for the NYPD is questioning those claims.
Peter Donald, an NYPD assistant commissioner, spoke to TMZ and said a full investigation was conducted, but they couldn’t find proof to back up the rapper’s claims.
Donald said investigations were conducted at every precinct around Columbus Circle, the area of Midtown Manhattan where the alleged incident took place. But nothing came up.
Police also supposedly looked at video surveillance and said they couldn’t see anything that substantiated Cardi’s story.
In an official statement, an NYPD spokesman also said they couldn’t find proof that she was put in a choke hold.
“The NYPD was made aware of a tweet made by rapper Cardi B, which was since deleted and indicated an alleged interaction between the NYPD and her,” said the spokesman. “The NYPD has no record or any other information to support the validity of this claim.”
It’s also been reported that the “Bodak Yellow” creator is refusing to speak to police, which is why they haven’t gotten her side of the story. But that’s a far cry from a couple of days ago when Cardi felt like expressing herself on social media.
“I can’t believe this cop put me on a choke hold just now,” she wrote in a now-deleted Tweet. “Sh– is crazy. These NY cops don’t know how to do they job.”
Based on separate TMZ report, the alleged incident happened on the evening of Sept. 19 after someone hit Cardi’s newly purchased Bentley SUV.
The rapper wasn’t driving at the time, but she and her cousin started arguing with the person in the other car, and that’s when police got involved. From there, Cardi said she was pinned against the vehicle and the officer’s hands latched onto her neck.
Afterwards, during a TV interview, Cardi’s boyfriend, Offset of Migos rap group, said he spoke to the rapper about the incident.
“At first when she called, I ain’t think she was being serious until I had seen it on her face,” he stated. “And she said they choked her out and did whatever they did. It was supposed to be two other people who was supposed to be fighting, and they ain’t touch the dudes they was fighting, they touched her … I don’t know what happened, but I know you can’t stop the police. The police kill people everyday and get away with it.”
In another part of the interview, Offset was asked if he thought something called the hip-hop cops were real, and he quickly said yes.
In fact, the hip-hop cops have been a topic of discussion both in and out of rap circles for quite some time, since Biggie’s murder in 1997.
Derrick Parker, a former NYPD detective, has spoken candidly about being a member of a hip-hop intelligence unit and according to Spin, he’s trained officers in other cities on how to prepare for large rap events.
“I saw a pattern,” Parker told the Village Voice in 2004. “The pattern was that the rap music industry was becoming more like organized crime. It was running side by side with the traditional steps of organized crime … What interested me was I saw a lot of these guys that were really bad dudes in Brooklyn starting to latch onto rappers and entertainers. So I used to monitor the incidents, department-wide, of anything that happened.”
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The late rapper Prodigy, who passed away in June, also spoke of a hip-hop task force.
He was pulled over in 2003 in New York and was arrested for having an illegal firearm and marijuana. Ultimately, he spent three years in Mid-State security prison.
“There’s a task force that works alongside the gun squad,” Prodigy said in 2011. “A lot of people thought it was a myth at first. They tried to deny it at first, but I actually met with the guy who started the task force during my trial.”
Of course, whether the hip-hop task force are the ones involved in the alleged Cardi B incident remains to be seen, but it’s clear that the NYPD have rappers on their radar. Especially after the shooting that took place at a Troy Ave concert in 2016, where Ronald “Banger” Mchphatter was shot and killed.
A little after that tragedy, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton labeled the whole rap genre as being just one thing, void of any differences.
“The crazy world of the so-called rap artists who are basically thugs that basically celebrate the violence they’ve lived all their lives,” he said on WCBS 880.
