Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD's First "Hip-Hop Cop" - Hardcover

Parker, Derrick; Diehl, Matt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312352514 ISBN 13: 9780312352516

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2006

Synopsis

Throughout his career, Derrick Parker worked on some of the biggest criminal cases in rap history, from the shooting at Club New York, where Derrick personally escorted Jennifer Lopez to police headquarters, to the first shooting of Tupac Shakur.
      Always straddling the fence between "po-po" and NYPD outsider, Derrick threatened police tradition to try to get the cases solved. He was the first detective to interview an informant offering a detailed account of Biggie Smalls's murder. He protected one of the only surviving eyewitnesses to the Jam Master Jay murder and knows the identity of the killers as well as the motivation behind the shooting.
      Notorious C.O.P. reveals hip-hop crimes that never made the paper--like the robbing of Foxy Brown and the first Hot 97 shooting--and answers some lingering questions about murders that have remained unsolved. The book that both the NYPD and the hip-hop community don't want you to read, Notorious C.O.P. is the first insider look at the real links between crime and hip-hop and the inefficiencies that have left some of the most widely publicized murders in entertainment history unsolved.

About this title

About the Author:

A twenty-year veteran of the NYPD, Derrick Parker headed the first special units force dedicated to the investigation of hip-hop-related crime. Now off the force, Parker serves as the media's rap-related crime expert, appearing in Rolling Stone, New York magazine, Blender, Vibe, The New York Times, Newsday, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers as well as shows on MTV, Fox, VH1, Unsolved Mysteries, and CourtTV.
 
Matt Diehl is a journalist whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, VIBE, Spin, The Village Voice, and Blender. He served as the music columnist for Elle magazine for four years and now serves as the music editor-at-large for Interview magazine. His first book was No-Fall Snowboarding.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Notorious C.O.P.
1.IT'S LIKE THAT, AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS : The Unsolved Mysteries of Hip-Hop TragedyThe allure of breaking the law is always too much for me to ever ignore.--Jay-Z, "Allure" 
You're nobody 'til somebody kills you ...--Notorious B. I. G.UF-61 Date of Occurrence: 10/30/02. Classification: Homicide. Approximate Time of Occurrence: 1930 hours. Referred to Detective Squad.IT was around 1:00 A.M. when my cell phone rang. On the other end of the line was A. J. Calloway, then the host of the Black Entertainment Television network's hit show 106th and Park--the TRL of the hip-hop generation. I could tell from his trembling voice A. J. had bad news.Male/Black. Age: 37 Date of Birth: 1/21/65 Wearing black jeans, black leather jacket, white shell-toe Adidas."Did you hear what happened?" A. J. said.On T/P/O victim was found facedown, apparently suffered from a gunshot wound, D.O.A.It had to be something more than just gossip: A. J. always keeps his cool, but tonight he sounded a little shook. Okay, real shook."No, what's up?" I replied.Victim identified as Jason Mizell (Jam Master Jay). 103 P.D.S. notified."Jam Master Jay got shot," he said.All I could say was, "Holy shit." We knew what was about to happen: we'd been down this road before. Tersely, we said our goodbyes. A. J. had other people to call. So did I.Witnesses uncooperative. No suspects, leads at this time.They say everything comes in threes. It happened in Las Vegas. It happened in Los Angeles. And now it had happened here. In New York. My own backyard. Less than a mile, in fact, from where I grew up. It was a familiar story. A hip-hop superstar had been killed. In full view of witnesses. And the murder would never be solved--at least not by conventional law enforcement. I started feeling sick to my stomach.I knew my phone was going to start ringing off the hook. The streets were gonna start talking, and talking loud. The clubs, corners, barbershops, boulevards, avenues, and back alleys where I used to hunt the truth were abuzz, and I couldn't turn my ears off from the murmurs of the street. The news that Jam Master Jay had been killed awoke the homicide detective that had been laying dormant inside me.I couldn't say it out loud yet, but I knew it already in my heart: badge or no badge, I was going to solve the Jam Master Jay murder and continue my mission to stop the cycle of violence and distrust that had claimed the lives of our greatest hip-hop icons. Boom! The "hip-hop cop" was back.Gutted, I started calling all my old street informants, trying to find out whatever I could. Reaching out to my contacts in Queens'shomicide division, where I'd worked so many years ago, I finally got in touch with Bernie Porter, a detective from the 103rd Precinct in South Jamaica. Porter confirmed the story going around: Jam Master Jay had been killed in his Jamaica, Queens-based recording studio. But, he added, NYPD didn't have much to go on, and furthermore, witnesses weren't cooperating."Surprise, surprise," I thought to myself. I told Bernie if he needed my help to give me a call. He never did, but I could already feel myself getting pulled in. While Jam Master Jay's murder would've been any homicide detective's nightmare, for me--as the New York Police Department's original "hip-hop cop," as I became known first by my law-enforcement colleagues and eventually by the media--it was worse than a nightmare.Hip-hop is in a state of crisis, yet nobody on either side is making the right moves to quash it. Due to its tragic legacy of violence, hip-hop supremacy could end at any time: just let one well-placed AK-47 spray at an awards show and it's all over--and considering what's gone down at those awards shows, that's a pretty fuckin' likely scenario. So when I got the call about Jam Master Jay's abrupt death that fateful night in 2002, it felt particularly bittersweet. His murder seemed so symbolic to me: if a tree is already dying, how can it survive when you remove the roots?In fact, I was no longer a homicide detective when I first heard the tragic news that hip-hop legend Jam Master Jay, the innovative D.J. for rap's first worldwide superstars, Run-DMC, had been shot and killed in his recording studio on October 30, 2002. I had actually retired from the New York Police Department (NYPD) nine months prior, but I was having trouble suppressing my investigative instincts. After spending twenty years on the force, they kicked in like a reflex.I started as a twenty-year-old beat cop walking seedy Times Square streets during Ed Koch's infamous mayoralty before moving on to the Bronx for undercover narcotics, ending up straight outta Brooklyn as a first-grade homicide detective with a gold shield under Rudy Giuliani's iron-fisted administration. Working homicide, I'd investigated well over three hundred murder cases; on the job, Isaw more dead people than that little kid in The Sixth Sense. I've seen bodies chopped up in sections and then neatly disposed of in little plastic bags. I found one victim's bones tossed on the Van Wyck Expressway. In another case, I saw a man's face blown clear off by a shotgun, his eyeballs blown out their sockets, leaving a hole in his head like a window. Through that "window," I could see the dude's brain membrane. Yup, just another day on the job. Talk to any big-city detective and you'll probably hear similar stories--but that's not why you're reading this. Ultimately, what I became most known for inside the NYPD (and in the media) was my status as the first hip-hop cop.The NYPD would've liked to keep my existence as the hip-hop cop secret. If it wasn't for a particular newspaper article, I probably wouldn't even be writing these words today. That article was the shot heard 'round the world, reprinted as far as Australia and bounced all over the Internet.On March 9, 2004, The Miami Herald published a story by Evelyn McDonnell and Nicole White headlined POLICE SECRETLY WATCHING HIP-HOP ARTISTS. In it, McDonnell and White revealed that Miami law enforcement were "secretly watching and keeping dossiers on hip-hop celebrities," even "[photographing] rappers as they arrived at Miami International Airport."According to Evelyn McDonnell, she became aware of Miami law enforcement's covert hip-hop surveillance through a not-so-covert human screwup. After that, McDonnell, The Miami Herald's chief music reviewer, wrote an article profiling local Miami rapper Jacki-O. She then received an e-mail from a Miami Beach-based police detective named Rosa Redruello asking her for information. "I collect intelligence on all current rappers and record companies in the South Beach area," Redruello explained in the note. McDonnell was taken aback. "It was pretty shocking," she explains in hindsight. "When I realized it was from a police officer, I knew this was a big deal. I e-mailed the woman back and said 'Sorry, I can't divulge my sources--but I'd love to hear more about what you do.'"That's right--Miami law enforcement's clandestine hip-hop surveillance wasn't discovered via an intense investigative exposé; no, adetective made it easy and sent a fucking e-mail. The first rule of law enforcement is the same as the code of the streets: keep your mouth shut--especially when talking to a journalist. Covert activity in any police department is kept undercover for two reasons. One, so those under surveillance don't realize they're being watched; two, exposure of such surveillance usually results in a public-relations disaster. As such, McDonnell and White's article exploded Miami's tensions like a volcano."Racial profiling" was already a hot-button topic for law enforcement across the nation; to many, the revelation that major urban police departments were targeting rappers and the hip-hop industry was further evidence of this practice. But racial profiling was an especially huge issue in Miami, according to McDonnell's collaborator Nicole White. "Black lawmakers were concerned by the profiling element," White explains today. "A lot of money was at stake, and that was the main concern."The fallout from The Miami Herald piece was immediate. In particular, local tourism was threatened, and Miami was already walking on thin ice where race issues were concerned. After the city had refused to officially welcome South African activist/leader Nelson Mandela in 1990, Miami suffered a debilitating three-year tourism boycott by African-Americans. In later years, racial tensions exploded over incidents that occurred when hundreds of thousands of black revelers descended upon Miami for Memorial Day celebrations.Since then, however, Miami had become a tourism mecca for hip-hop artists and their fans, with South Beach's glitzy, upscale clubs, hotels, and recording studios all catering to the blinged-out rap pack. Rappers were spending big money in Miami and showing off the city's high life in music videos, and as a result its luster as a glamorous A-list vacation spot had been restored. But now that was threatened. Following McDonnell and White's article, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil-rights groups immediately threatened major lawsuits. And music industry insiders were pissed. "Russell Simmons was very upset," McDonnell says. "Damon Dash went on record: he was very upset that incidents from hispast were still haunting him. Luther Campbell was very upset. Fat Joe found it all depressing because he thought in Miami he was getting away from that kind of surveillance. The hip-hop community in general was like 'We knew it was going on.'"Quickly, I found myself in the eye of this hip-hop hurricane. Eventually it came out that members of Miami P.D. had attended training sessions in "hip-hop crime" from NYPD detectives. I directed those training sessions, but what caused even greater controversy was the admission that Miami had in its possession a dossier known as the Binder, which I also had created in my tenure in the NYPD's hip-hop squad. "We knew there was a guy in New York who had retired who was responsible for the Binder," McDonnell explains, "but the police wouldn't give us Derrick's name."It didn't take them long to put two and two together, though, as all the evidence that was never meant to get into the public's hands led directly to me. As the NYPD's rap expert, I was commissioned in 2001 to create the Binder, a printable database detailing the associations and background of every rapper with a known criminal arrest. It would grow to be numbingly complete, numbering over a thousand pages. The Binder covered everyone from boldfaced hip-hop superstars like Puff Daddy, 50 Cent, and Jay-Z to obscure wannabes like E-Money Bags. It listed every case each rapper ever caught, every felon they ran with, every beef they had with rival rap crews--along with personal information like photos, Social Security numbers, record-company affiliations, and last-known addresses. Not surprisingly, the Binder caused a great outcry when it was leaked, and I ended up taking the hits.The resulting episode reminded me of that scene in Scarface where Al Pacino's Tony Montana character states, "You need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers and say, 'That's the bad guy.' So what dat make you? Good? You're not 'good'--you just know how to hide." After the Binder surfaced, I was that "bad guy"--everyone else was hiding. Like the name of Tupac's bestselling album, all eyes were on me, ready to throw blame my way for one of the biggest law-enforcement controversies in decades. To theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) I was suddenly public enemy number one.Additionally, I found myself in the crosshairs of rappers as well: "I got the rap patrol on the gat patrol," Jay-Z rhymes on his hit "99 Problems."My own people, though, truly left me out in the cold. The NYPD, my family for two decades of my life, which I departed as a detective with the highest rank of first-grade, couldn't take the heat and left me out to dry. "New York denied everything," McDonnell says. "It was like a game of whodunit?" Indeed, NYPD brass basically denied my existence, implying I was a lone wolf, a renegade working solo--even though I had taken my orders directly from the top: police commissioners Howard Safir and Bernard Kerik. Under Safir, who served under Rudy Giuliani's mayoral administration between 1996 and 2000, I was instructed to create a squad devoted to hip-hop crime. However, it was Giuliani's last commish, Bernard Kerik, who pushed me to create the Binder following the notorious 2001 shooting involving Lil' Kim outside the New York City hip-hop radio station Hot 97. Kerik would later become not just a bestselling author but also the first major scandal of President George W. Bush's second term in office: Kerik's nomination for director of Homeland Security ended in scandal involving allegations of mistresses and tax improprieties. Yet as the tough but innovative boss of the NYPD, any spike in hip-hop-related violence and the subsequent threat to the public seemed to personally galvanize him.Kerik didn't exactly run to my defense when the shit hit the fan, however. When the NYPD began receiving criticism in the press for their involvement in hip-hop surveillance, they made me the scapegoat. I was even called an "Uncle Tom" by my fellow African-Americans, which hurt. To many in the media, the activist black community, and the hip-hop world, the existence of a law-enforcement unit created strictly to keep tabs on hip-hop was evidence that young black men were being unfairly targeted. The actions of my hip-hop squad were compared to the F.B.I.'s COINTELPRO program, created in large part to destroy radical black activists duringthe civil-rights era. Like everything in life, however, the truth is far more complicated.In fact, as the NYPD's hip-hop cop, I led a paradoxical existence--I was a "po-po" that loved hip-hop music, yet wasn't afraid to put the cuffs on a rapper if he was breaking the law. Because of the way I dressed and the color of my skin, many of my fellow officers mistook me for a perp; later, they would suspect, because of my appearance and knowledge of the hip-hop industry, that I was too close to it, in too deep to be an objective upholder of the law.I often felt that it was my critics whose subjective cultural assumptions clouded their perspective. To the ACLU types on my case, I'm black, okay? I grew up in the same 'hoods, like Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and Hollis, Queens, as many of the most famous rappers; I'm more likely to be racially profiled myself than to engage in any racial profiling. No, as the hip-hop cop, I was always clear about what my job was--to go after criminals and to protect the public.That didn't mean persecuting rappers just because they tended to be young, black, rich, and angry (although during my experience with the Giuliani administration it verged on that--that's when my disillusionment with the NYPD really began). Often my job entailed protecting rappers themselves from the criminal element that attached itself to them like a barnacle. Sometimes my very presence at a concert or club would prevent a crime from happening. I was able to stop a lot of hip-hop-related crimes from happening that the public never even heard about, ones that never made it to the papers.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0312352514
• ISBN 13: 9780312352516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320