Photo Credit: Nipsey Hussle/Instagram
It’s going on 3 years this March that Nipsey Hussle’s been dead and when it happened, the Los Angeles Police Department denied that an investigation going on in the neighborhood of his Marathon Clothing store had anything to do with him. Well a new report has come in proving that a lie. In an episode of Guardian‘s Today In Focus podcast, Nipsey’s brother Samiel Asghedom aka Blacc Sam revealed how the city was leaning in on Nipsey.
The program called LASER (Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration) focused it’s anti-gang efforts around Nipsey’s store and Blacc Sam said, “The agenda was, ‘Whatever they’re doing over there, crush it.” Also law professor Andrew Ferguson described the program as a “metaphor that they were going to, like laser surgery, remove the tumors, the bad actors from the community” via “predictive policing technology.”
The LA Times describes the LASER program as using data to identify “anchor points” where more police could be concentrated but the program was discontinued in 2019 due to community criticism. An LAPD spokesperson said “We discontinued LASER because we want to reassess the data. It was inconsistent. We’re pulling back.”
What’s interesting about this contradiction of how Nipsey wasn’t targeted with the reality also goes to show another hidden secret in policing. The LAPD has over 60 people in their PR department and have been known to push misinformation. They’ve been claiming there’s a rash of shoplifting going on now when that’s down. Many of the crime indicators reported on in the national news about the area come from vague LAPD quotes from their massive PR department to try and bring about harsh national policing legislation. #StayWoke. Nipsey’s just an example of their paid misinformation campaigns.
Listen to the full interview here
