Police were allegedly building case against Pop Smoke before death
Pop Smoke was shot and killed in Los Angeles in 2020. Years later, a former New York Police Department chief has claimed that he was the subject of an investigation before his death.
John Chell recently appeared on a podcast, where he alleged that he was “personally involved” in an investigation around the late Brooklyn rapper.
The case allegedly implicated several Brooklyn gangs that the rapper was “down with,” including the G-Stone Crips.
“He’s the up-and-coming star, if you will, and we were into that gang, and he was part of it, but we didn’t have much on Pop,” he told The John Rondi Show.
Chell claimed that their biggest move was in 2019 when Smoke allegedly moved a stolen Rolls-Royce from California to New York.
“We made an arrest, and we tried to leverage that,” he said. “You might be running with the gang guys, and they’re your friends. But you got a lot more to lose. You got millions, you’re a rising star.”
The ex-police chief claimed that Smoke passed before they had the chance to make any further progress into the investigation.
“As we were cultivating this whole gang case, I believe he got murdered,” he stated, adding that he had “a very distinct sound – didn’t he? It really was.”
He continued, “Years after that, there was always a Pop Smoke Day in Canarsie. We had to put a lot of cops there because a lot of gang members showed up. It got dangerous.”
Smoke was 20 at the time of his death. He was fatally shot in the chest during a home invasion robbery in the Hollywood Hills on February 19th, 2020.