Miami and Miami Beach police are secretly watching and keeping dossiers on hip-hop celebrities such as P. Diddy and DMX and their entourages when they come to South Florida, a move police say is to protect the stars and the public.
Officers say they have photographed rappers as they arrived at Miami International Airport. They stake out hotels, nightclubs and video shoots. They consult a six-inch-thick black binder of every rapper and member of his or her group with an arrest record in the state of New York. The binder begins with a photo and rap sheet of Grammy-nominated rapper 50 Cent. It ends with Ja Rule. Both men are embroiled in one of the most bitter feuds in the hip-hop industry, one that Eminem, 50 Cent’s producer, has warned in the song “Bully” could lead to bloodshed.
The policing effort of top entertainers–which hip-hop experts criticize as unnecessary stereotyping–was created, police say, to protect the public and artists who have chosen to make South Florida their destination to live and party.
Government agencies keeping tabs on musicians is not new. The Nixon administration investigated John Lennon in the 1970s and tried to have him deported. The band Body Count, led by rapper Ice-T, got the attention of police nationally in the early 1990s with the song “Cop Killer.” But those cases involved individual artists or groups, not monitoring across a musical genre.
“There’s been no shortage of rock stars and other musicians” scrutinized by police, said Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. “But there has never been anything like this.”
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Several music executives and legal scholars say the gathering of intelligence highlights the misunderstanding between police and a $10 billion industry. “Some people see gangs and hip-hop artists as being synonymous,” said Benjamin Chavis, president and CEO of The Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, a government-watchdog and voter-registration group. “That’s a mistake. The recording industry is a legitimate American enterprise, not a gang.”
Press says it’s good police work that has nothing to do with stereotyping a culture or musical genre: “What would law enforcement be if we closed our eyes? Our job is to know as much about things that could hurt innocent people.”
Miami police Sgt. Rafael Tapanes said the New York Police Department gave the binder to local law enforcement during a three-day “hip-hop training session” in May. Officers from other major cities including Los Angeles and Atlanta attended the event. New York police officials denied having a hip-hop task force when asked recently by The Miami Herald.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])