Harlem, New York rapper Immortal Technique addressed police brutality and the death of Eric Garner during a newly-published interview with Vlad TV. He began his conversation by addressing what he feels is a lack of respect for human life among police officers.
Tech went on to reveal that he doesn’t hate all cops, but did state that something needs to be done in regards to the aggressive manner of some police officers. An aggression he says sometimes stems from their egos being hurt.
“It’s just very sad that you see that there are people who have no respect for human life,” Immortal Technique said. “Maybe because they’ve been desensitized to it over the years of this. And I’m not—It’s sad because I probably sound like I hate all cops in this interview, but I really don’t. I can’t hate people I don’t know or that I’ve never met. But I definitely do understand more than other people how to traverse the roads of discussion with them. Because they obviously, in my experience, get very aggressive very quickly. They’ll arrest you just because you hurt their ego. You could break the law and they’ll let you walk away, but if you hurt their ego they’ll arrest you or they’ll hurt you or they’ll fuck with you. And that’s something that needs to be dealt with. There needs to be some kind of protocol to check somebody’s pride.”
Similar to Cam’ron, who recently shared his belief that New York City is “soft” when it concerns police brutality, Tech referred to those in his city as “incredibly pacified people.” He attributed that particular trait to the number of distractions present in the city.
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Prior to speaking on the residents of New York City’s reaction to police brutality, the rapper revealed that the last thing the city wants is for the Eric Garner incident to go to court.
“If I followed the city’s playbook I’d know that they’re gonna send a highball number to the family,” he said. “They don’t want to go to court. They don’t want to see court. The last time they had a real incident like that was Diallo. They don’t want the city to force them to find a cop guilty or not guilty. Both are a bad look for them. With the cops found not guilty they’ll be severe protests in the streets because of Ferguson. Because of any other incident that’ll show up from now until then here in New York. New Yorkers are definitely fed up, but they’re also an incredibly pacified people. You gotta understand how many distractions there are in the city. For us to be ultimately focused on that and stay focused on that. Think about how many people just died in Gaza. And now this. And that’s completely at the back of the news cycle.”
Lastly, Immortal Technique stated that the police are merely “the first line of defense” and are “foot soldiers” for someone much higher up.
“We don’t realize that those gatekeepers of government are who the police worship now,” Tech said. “Those are the people we really have a problem with. The police are just the first line of defense. They’re foot soldiers in the war. You know? But if you keep fighting the soldiers you gotta bomb the chief. You gotta meet the man in order to end this. You can’t just keep arguing with the pawns. You gon’ have to checkmate the king at some point…You have to find out who controls those strings that give the police their budget.”
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