There's more furor over the NYPD escort that rapper-entrepreneur Sean Combs received last week when in a hurry to travel from the Hammerstein Ballroom to a post-Dirty Diddy Money concert party in New Jersey. A former Midtown South cop was shocked that Combs/ Diddy/ P.Diddy/ Puff Daddy could have gotten such a pass, referring to the infamous 1999 shooting incident at a Manhattan nightclub, "After how he treated cops the night he was arrested in Club New York, no one should have helped him cross the street, let alone get a police escort."
Diddy was accused of firing a gun in the nightclub, but he was cleared of charges (he also settled with his driver who claimed that Puffy made him flee the cops; his protege Jamal "Shyne" Barrow was convicted). According to the Post, an attorney says, "This wasn't to benefit P. Diddy. It was to ameliorate a crowd situation." A cop supposedly called a sergeant, who initially refused to help out Diddy but then saw a huge crowd and, per the NYPD, authorized a one-block esort. At any rate, there is an Internal Affairs investigation.
Mayor Bloomberg seized a bit of populist spirit when he criticized the escort, "The bottom line is the police department should treat everybody exactly the same. If you don't get a police escort, P. Diddy shouldn't." Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith told the NY Times, "[Bloomberg]'s got an inherent belief that all New Yorkers ought to be treated alike. It’s instinctive for him, and I think when he learned about this situation, he was upset about it and asked for a careful review."
