Suit: Police Made Man Rap for His Freedom

A Brooklyn man has filed a lawsuit alleging that NYPD officers forced him to rap if he wanted to get out of handcuffs. What’s more is, the suit claims the officers warned him that if his rhymes weren’t “hot” enough, he would not be released. Quinshon Shingles’s rap about booze, “bitches” and weed was apparently “hot” enough to earn his freedom, but it also earned the police a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court. 

Shingles, 28, whose rap name is “Sauce Da Boss,” told the New York Post, “I felt like they were humiliating me. They were all Caucasian officers, and I’m a black man, and they had me performing for my freedom. I was really upset.”

According to the suit, Shingles said he, his cousin and a friend were at the cousin’s home in East New York in December of 2011. The suit states that plainclothes officers showed up and demanded to perform a search and that Shingles cousin, Tyriek Fortune, was suspected of an unspecified criminal offense. 

The suit says that Fortune’s mom, Donyale Kitchens, refused to allow the cops in without a warrant, and the officers agreed to come back later.

But according to the suit, the officers did not return with a warrant but rather convinced the building super to give them keys to the pad and they subsequently entered the home and handcuffed all three men while they searched the premises. 

The cops allegedly opted for the free concert upon learning that Shingles was an aspiring rapper. “They said, ‘Rap something if you want to go home,’ ” Shingles said. “I was scared. I was nervous. I didn’t want to got o jail.”

According to the suit, Shingles said he was handcuffed on the ground and leaning against a couch when he recited rap lyrics he had written a couple months earlier. When he finished rapping, the suit states the cops let him walk while his friends remained in cuffs. The officers’ search of the apartment did not turn up any illegal items, the suit states.

Kitchens and Shingles are suing the NYPD for illegal search and false imprisonment for an undisclosed sum. An NYPD spokeswoman declined comment, saying the department hadn’t seen the lawsuit yet.

Records show that one of the officers involved, David Grieco, is part of a team of NYPD officers who have been hit with a slew of lawsuits over illegal searches and theft.