N.W.A. fan in New Zealand hacks police radio frequency, plays "Fuck Tha Police" for days on end
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” said American architect and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller. “To change something, build a new model that will make the existing model obsolete.” For example, if your local police radio frequency doesn’t play N.W.A.’s “Fuck Tha Police” at any given moment, for days on end, then create a new reality in which it does.
That has been the mandate of an anonymous Kiwi in Dunedin, New Zealand, hereafter known as the “home of the police-fuckers.” According to The Independent, someone has hacked a radio frequency used by local police in order to repeatedly broadcast the legendary rap group’s “Fuck Tha Police,” in what is either a culture jamming-style protest of authority or a good-faith effort to share a very good song with a bunch of people who may simply not have had the opportunity to hear it yet. Over the course of the past weekend, the song was played multiple times, forcing on-duty cops to listen to the track over and over, the better to savor lines like, “But take off the gun so you can see what’s up / And we’ll go at it, punk, and I’ma fuck you up!”
Strangely, the hack hasn’t been universally praised from members of law enforcement grateful to have finally had an opportunity to ruminate of the implications of a subtle claim such as, “Taking out a police would make my day.” Inspector Kevin Lloyd says the music actually hampered police efforts when the song “interfered with armed police trying to co-ordinate their response to a man pointing a gun at a motorist.” Left unsaid is whether that interference actually reminded everyone that a funky beat is the best route to peacefully resolving potentially violent situations. (It probably isn’t.)
However, the boom-bap-loving hacker was also thoughtful enough to mix it up a little. In case officers started to feel mentally exhausted from hearing the same song over and over, those on the police frequency would occasionally be granted the chance to hear another track: Rage Against The Machine’s cover of “Fuck Tha Police.” It’s unclear whether the hacker would soon be adding Body Count’s “Cop Killer,” followed by Soundgarden’s live cover of the song from Lollapalooza ‘92 to the mix, but New Zealand police can certainly hope for the best.
It bears noting that this new police radio piracy comes in the wake of “reports in August of pig grunts and abuse being broadcast over police radios on the North Island,” which is honestly way more unsettling, at least until pigs evolve to the point they can spit hot fire like, “Without a gun and a badge, what do you got? A sucker in a uniform waiting to get shot.”