A rapper known as Buddha Lee Raye, real name Bilal Johnson, has expressed his indifference with the New York Police Department with a series of stickers placed in subway stations across New York City.
HipHopWired.com reports that Johnson has compared the NYPD to the Ku Klux Klan with his anti-NYPD stickers. In one picture Johnson uploaded to Instagram over a month ago, a sticker featuring the image of a Klansman, a swastika, and a NYPD badge with a line drawn through them can be seen.
Johnson recently spoke on the stickers and his #PleaseStop movement during an interview with DNAInfo.com. He also explained that the stickers are meant to be read as “No KKK. No Nazis. Please, stop hating. Stop killing. Stop racism.”
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“Anyone can make the case that the police department helps the people of New York on a daily basis,” Johnson said. “But there’s that aspect of brutality that gets overlooked. That needs to stop. The sticker reads how it does: No KKK. No Nazis. Please, stop hating. Stop killing. Stop racism. I needed something that people would automatically see and take a moment to process — something people thought that they saw before but when they looked closer it’s actually something different. I wanted that shock value.”
The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) criticized Johnson and his anti-NYPD stickers, calling them “an act of vandalism,” and revealed that any stickers will be “immediately removed.”
“It is an act of vandalism,” a MTA spokesman said while speaking with Gothamist.com. “The signs will continue to be immediately removed after they are located. Unfortunately acts of vandalism require shifting personnel away from their normal duties and responsibilities which costs everyone.”
