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Retired Detroit police Sgt. Larry Courts told a tale straight outta the old school days of hip-hop at a forum in Ypsilanti Wednesday night.
Courts was one of the Detroit police officers in charge of informing the members of the infamous gangsta rap group N.W.A - including Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Easy E - that they couldn't play a their police-bashing tune off their hit record "Straight Outta Compton" while performing at Joe Louis arena in 1989.
Officials decided the group's song, "F*** the Police," might incite violence at the concert. The group tried playing the song anyway, prompting officers to jump on stage and stop the performance.
Courts questioned the decision and said he was just following orders. In fact, he said he pleaded with his higher-ups to just let them play the song.
But the decision had already been made.
The incident was chronicled in the recent N.W.A. biopic movie of the same name as the album, though a recent report in the Detroit Free Press says some of the details in the movie might have been a little rearranged for the sake of drama.
While responding to a question about interactions between police officers and teenagers at a "Black Lives Do Matter" forum held at the Parkridge Community Center in Ypsilanti, Courts told his account of the N.W.A. concert to illustrate that police are always there to "keep the peace."
"I remember years ago when N.W.A. came to Detroit," he said. "I was working the gang squad at the time. Those types of venues, we were always there. We had contact with (N.W.A.) in advance that there was one song that they had out at the time. I'm sure some of you remembe r- well maybe not the young kids, but the old kids - Eff the Police. It wasn't going to happen in the city of Detroit. And we told them that before they came. That particular night, all our personnel were working that venue. There were close to 200 of us. We were strategically placed throughout ... Joe Louis Arena."
Courts said current Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon was in charge of the gang squad at the time.
"I said, 'This is America. They should be allowed to sing their song. The fear is that it would incite (trouble)," he said. "Me and some of the other supervisors and ... some of the guys who worked the streets ... we didn't think there was going to be a riot. But we had our marching orders. We were told that under no circumstance that they were to perform that song."
Courts said he personally talked to members of N.W.A., with a delegation of cops behind him, and told them they couldn't play "F*** tha Police."
"At the end of their night, at the end of their performance, they started their song. We immediately jumped on the stage and started taking out amplifiers," he said.
Pulling the plug on a song in front of "20,000 screaming kids who did not see any harm in that particular song being played" may not have been the right decision to help keep the peace, which is the main role of police in any situation, Courts intimated.
"That's when the problem started," he said.
The Detroit Free Press reported that nine adults and nine juveniles were arrested on misdemeanor charges outside Joe Louis.
In the movie, members of N.W.A. are chased out of the concert by police and taken into custody, but that might not be totally accurate, according to the recent Free Press report, which cites a fact-check of the movie conducted by the Daily Beast.
"The members of N.W.A. were hustled away from the arena by their security and whisked off to the safety of their hotel rooms -- only to be arrested later when they sneaked down to the lobby to meet girls..." the group's former manager Jerry Heller recalled in a memoir.
John Counts covers crime and breaking news for The Ann Arbor News. He can be reached at johncounts@mlive.com or you can follow him on Twitter. Find all Washtenaw County crime stories here.