Lil Uzi Vert has been mistakenly accused of being a dognapper by the police in a small town in Pennsylvania, and the backlash against the long arm of the law has been nothing short of hilarious.
TMZ reported that the rapper’s photo appeared in a rap sheet put out by the Wilkes-Barre Township police department on Thursday (August 31). In a Facebook post, police informed its followers that someone had swiped a sweet little puppy from the Brookside Pups shop in town.
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Unfortunately, the police put up a photo of Lil Uzi Vert instead of the real suspect — and it took another 30 minutes for them to correct the error, but not before the page was flooded with comments about the canine snafu.
It turned out that the actual suspect had a photo of the “Watch This” rapper as their profile picture on social media, which is why the Wilkes-Barre police department shared the picture.
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But Roc Nation was not amused by the mix-up. “The Wilkes-Barre Township Police Department should be embarrassed and ashamed for disparaging [Uzi’s] character,” the company said in a statement to TMZ. “This grave error could’ve had significant repercussions on Uzi’s career and epitomizes how Black men can be wrongfully charged and arrested by police departments across the country.”
The statement continued: “Uzi loves all animals and this serious mistake has deterred the apprehension of the kidnapper. Our collective hope is that the puppy is safely and promptly rescued.”
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Incidentally, Lil Uzi Vert was nowhere near the Wilkes-Barre area when the puppy was kidnapped — though the alleged dog-napper was last seen heading to Philadelphia, which is Uzi’s hometown.
This is just the latest setback Lil Uzi Vert has experienced as of late. Last week, they announced that their Young Thug-inspired album, Barter 16, faced the challenges of a massive leak.
Several tracks from Uzi’s upcoming project were released online without their consent, some low quality and others in perfect shape. One of the leaked cuts even features Thugga, whose Barter 6 mixtape serves as the inspiration behind the project.
As with other such unofficial releases, the songs have been taken down and uploaded again constantly across several different platforms. Hence, no specific website or streaming service hosts the tracks.
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Though the 28-year-old rapper never announced a release date for the project, they have been hyping it up over the last few weeks. With the leaks now out, its future remains uncertain.
