Before Pop Smoke was shot and killed at a home in the Hollywood Hills, the Brooklyn performing artist was dodging calls from the New York Police Department who had been hounding him to acquire information on gangs in the area.
They had been asking him about a series of shootings that occurred in the city, the New York Post reported today. The NYPD first spoke with Pop Smoke after he was arrested for possessing a stolen $375,000 Rolls Royce Wraith.
Reportedly, the investigators told Pop Smoke they had spotted him driving the car in reverse around the same time as the incident. When asked to provide information about the shooting in which nobody was killed, Pop Smoke declined.
Moreover, the police had been trying to get information regarding the 823 Crips, a subdivision of the street gang in the city. His lawyer, Peter Frankel, says Pop Smoke didn’t want to cooperate with the police.
Frankel said the 20-year-old rapper didn’t want to speak with them, and the interactions, if he were forced into one, were often short and non-informative. In January 2020, he was hit with a federal charge, and the move was to get more pressure on him to give up information to authorities.
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After being arrested for a federal crime, the rapper was let out of jail on a $250,000 bond, and he was ordered to stay away from gang members and their hideouts, as well as submit drug tests. The result of this was that he was unable to put on a show in NYC before he was killed in California.
Pop Smoke agreed to not put on his show that night, however, Pop Smoke’s lawyer said it was clear he wasn’t a “person of interest” in another shooting which the police were investigating. Three days after, the rapper was killed.
Approximately four people were charged back in July of this year, and they believe he was targeted on account of the social media posts he had uploaded. Pop Smoke’s record, Shoot for the Stars, Aim For The Moon, dropped this year following his death.
It was a massive hit commercially and critically.