Fat Joe claims police attempted to frame him for murder several times
Fat Joe has had numerous brushes with the law. During his early years in the Bronx, he claims that on several occasions that he was targeted by police for his potential involvement in criminal activity.
While he never got locked up the emcee recently unveiled that he has been a target of law enforcement since he stepped on the scene. During an appearance on the renowned Shannon Sharpe podcast, Club Shay Shay, the Terror Squad founder asserted that the police have tried to frame him for murder multiple times throughout his career.
Looking back on his life and the difficult transition he had moving from the streets into music, Joe told Sharpe, “I had the cops on me. The cops tried to frame me, like, three times for murder. This is a true story. I don’t really talk about it but framed. The police was trying to get me out of there! The people was trying to get me out of there!”
Although the ‘Lean Back’ lyricist had the police on him all the time, he said people in the Bronx loved him and so shielded him from police investigations, stating, “It was like public enemy number one, but my community loved me so they would protect me. When the cops came, the old ladies would let me in their house, and they would save me all the time.”
Fat Joe didn’t go into detail about any of the alleged incidents, he has been linked to various killings over the years. In 2004, when ‘Lean Back’ was sitting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, the rapper’s bodyguard, Jose Mulero, was charged with murder, which stemmed back to an incident from 1994.
Law enforcement insisted that the crew’s leader was a witness to the murder. They even suggested he was a snitch by publicly stating he cooperated with the case to put Murelo behind bars. However, this was untrue. In 2004, the lyricist’s lawyer, Peter Frankel, told The New York Times, “Joe received a subpoena. Joe responded to the subpoena as he was under the obligation to do so, and that was the extent of his cooperation. Joe was not an eyewitness to a homicide. He knows nothing about a homicide. He didn’t see anything.”
Police also called the ‘All The Way Up’ rhymer in as a witness to a double murder in South Beach, Florida, in 2007. It had been reported that he knew the two victims and was in the same car as them when they were killed. The rapper was never accused of any criminal wrongdoing.
Fat Joe was accused of being uncooperative at the time. However, his attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, spoke publicly to deny that claim, stating, “I don’t know where this [story] comes from that Joe doesn’t wanna help! We’re not looking to hide anything.”