New York Daily News

His corner

Embattled cop & Fitty pal around

- BY THOMAS TRACY

RAPPER 50 Cent lent his highwattag­e star power to an embattled police detective at an NYPD boxing tournament, the Daily News has learned.

Fitty was sitting between Detective David Terrell and Terrell’s lawyer Eric Sanders at the Smoker at New York Expo Center in the Bronx on Thursday when the raucous audience of mostly cops starting yelling: “Hey 50! Get the Strap! Get the Strap!” sources said.

“Get the Strap” is the catch phrase the rapper uses in most of his tweets — including one that referenced Deputy Inspector Emmanuel Gonzalez, who was accused of shaking down a Sunset Park, Brooklyn, businessma­n for 11 “free” roundtrip tickets to Puerto Rico and provision of a doctor with a generator after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

The NYPD investigat­ed the tweet as a “threat” against Gonzalez. “Strap” is a slang word for “gun.”

The rapper has since removed the “Get the Strap” phrase from his link to the Gonzalez story, which was first reported in The News.

“Why would they put me in this, now it’s going to get covered everywhere?” the rapper asked in a second tweet about the investigat­ion. “Big f----p.”

Terrell was stripped of his badge and gun and has been riding a desk for two years after being accused of falsely arresting people — most notably 18-year-old Pedro Hernandez, whom he arrested as a suspect in a 2015 shooting.

Sanders said the rapper didn’t know Terrell — or his issues with the department — until Thursday, but the two hit it off.

“They met there and hung out,” Sanders said. “Everyone had a good time.”

“The cops around them even had a better time,” Sanders joked, thinking back on the crowd’s response.

The rapper was so popular at the boxing event that at one

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States