Last October, police in the western Massachusetts town of Westfield were called to Shenanigans Pub for a homecoming party that got a bit out of hand. When they arrived and tried to clear more than 350 patrons out of the bar, which has a listed capacity of 160, the man spinning the tunes for the evening, DJ Boogy, decided to drop N.W.A.’s 1988 protest song, “Fuck Tha Police”.
That move, according to MassLive, landed DJ Boogy — whose real name is Kashawn Harris, a 25-year-old from Springfield — a court hearing on March 11. At the hearing, he was cited for disorderly conduct and ordered to pay a $50 fine.
On the night of the incident, October 17, a Westfield police offer noticed Harris’ choice of song and wrote him a summons. “I believed at that time the combination of alcohol, the excessive amount of people in the bar and the song that the DJ chose to play at that time was an intentional act by the DJ to incite the crowd which showed a reckless disregard for public safety,” wrote officer Juanita Mejias, via MassLive.
The report states that Harris cut the music after he made eye contact with Mejias. He claims in an interview with the Western Massachusetts publication that he had “no intention of inciting a riot… It was just college kids having fun.”
Harris claims he already had the N.W.A. song cued up to play before police arrived, and his side of the bar was already cleared out when the track began. But Mejias says the song came on after she told Harris to kill the music.
Harris is a graduate of Westfield State University, and that weekend was the school’s annual homecoming. “For them to even think I was trying to start riots was frustrating for me,” Harris says. “That’s not my kind of background, that’s not where I come from.”
N.W.A. will be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame later this year.