Some say he was 50 Cent before 50 Cent. Some called him “the Robin Hood of the Ghetto”, while the establishment dubbed him “the crack city terminator”. In the hood, his solution is seen as the only possible answer to an ongoing epidemic of police brutality. Some of your favorite rappers from French Montana to Lloyd Banks to Jay-Z named him on their tracks and BET felt he was so important to American culture that their american mobster The series was supposed to open with him, but only the educated know why the name Larry Davis still rings more than three decades after that fateful night in November 1986.
On February 20, 2008, Adam Abdul Hakeem, aka Larry Davis, was stabbed to death in New York’s Shawangunk State Prison by a fellow inmate after serving 23 years on an illegal weapons charge. Most would say that people die every day in American prisons, so what’s the deal with another dead prisoner? Well, first we have to explain why Mr. Davis was in jail for so long on a simple firearms charge in the first place.
As he said on camera after his capture in 1986, “the police gave me the weapons!”, which Davis was eventually charged with after being acquitted of shooting 6 NYPD officers. The then 21-year-old BX native’s defense was that he shot the officers in self-defense. Davis revealed that he was dealing drugs for these Bronx neighborhood officers, claiming they wanted to kill him because of what he knew about the drug operation within the department and a Bronx jury found him. believed. This case was the first and quite possibly the only time in American history where a civilian was cleared of all charges of shooting a police officer.
The NYPD and then-Mayor Edward Koch were outraged by the result. After Larry’s death, former Mayor Koch reportedly said, “The prison system did what the criminal justice system couldn’t. It’s safe to say that with the endless accusations against the NYPD and other police departments nationwide for brutality against blacks and browns, sympathy for Larry Davis has been met with fierce opposition.
With recent killings of black youths by police and civilians becoming the norm, the question in the urban community is whether or not Larry Davis’ solution to police brutality is the only option left. With normal citizens given the option to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to black youth and the prison industrial complex as punishment to defend themselves, the plain truth is that it has become the only option for some. With landmark cases from Emmitt Till to Botham Jean, history reveals that people like Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and even Larry Davis will always be heroes. We’ve heard Larry’s name come out of everyone’s mouths, from ATCQ to Jay-Z.
Discover Larry’s story on Troy Reed’s Street Stories Larry Davis: A Typical Routine HitBET american mobster series and is also rumored to be in the hands of multiple filmmakers, which could eventually spawn the story on the big screen.
