Someone in New Zealand has been illegally broadcasting N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” on law enforcement radio frequencies. Though it’s an admittedly amusing stunt, officials say it could put the public in serious danger.
According to the Otago Daily Times, the iconic protest song began playing on officers’ radios over the weekend. The original version and a cover by Rage Against the Machine have been broadcasted multiple times within the past few days, causing disruption to police communication. Inspector Kelvin Lloyd pointed to a specific incident in which the broadcast interfered with officers attempting to coordinate a response to a man pointing a firearm at motorists.
“It was putting people in danger,” Inspector Kelvin Lloyd told the Otago Daily Times. “There’s no question that if it carries on and if they do what they’re doing, it will delay a response. […] Any interference with a police radio constitutes a risk to public safety, and anyone caught doing this can face a penalty of criminal nuisance and up to one year imprisonment.”
Lloyd said he doesn’t believe the individual behind the prank is using official police equipment. There been no reports of missing radios, and the devices require a specific charger that's difficult for the public to obtain.
“F*ck tha Police” appeared on N.W.A’s debut album Straight Outta Compton. The polarizing song has been praised for addressing the longstanding issues of police brutality and racial profiling, while others have criticized it for condoning violence toward law enforcement. The FBI had also sent a strongly worded letter to N.W.A's record label, claiming the song misrepresented officers.
“When we got the letter, I was 18 years old so I was real naive to the FBI, I didn't care at all. I didn't know what they did. They wasn't really my concern. The people we were worried about was LAPD, Compton police, the sheriffs. That's what we was worried about,” Ice Cube explained to Billboard in 2015. “So, you know, we didn't really trip off the impact of that or the ramifications of that. We were just like, a letter, really? Put that shit away, let's keep doing what we was doing. And it was easy to say, 'Nah man, we need to tell the world that these motherfuckers are trying to intimidate us and just show what our government is doing to rap artists, citizens. They're trying to intimidate us.' We didn't care about that letter.”
