The Man Did Bust Our Music

Jesse Walker | July 10, 2007

Rock writer Phyllis Pollack recently put in a FOIA request for the FBI's file on James Brown. In the June Rock & Rap Confidential, Dave Marsh describes her discoveries:

The charge that sent James Brown to prison was a so-called "blue light violation." It's all but unprecedented to be given six years in prison for such a crime (refusing to pull over for the cops), let alone receive that punishment from two states. (A young white man sentenced for the same violation the same day received a suspended sentence.)

James Brown wasn't sent to prison because he was a PCP-crazed soul man with a gun. He went to prison because he fled the cops, all right, but he fled them with good reason, For eighteen months Brown had been targeted for harassment by cops in Aiken, South Carolina and Richmond County, Georgia, which sits right alongside Beech Island, SC, where the Browns resided. It began when Brown got into a fender bender on the Georgia highway he had to use to get home. That one resulted in Brown being jailed after some very dubious proceedings, and allegedly being punched in the mouth.

The FBI report also reveals that Brown did not lead cops on a high speed chase through two states. The police admitted that they followed Brown but they never "chased" him--they never even turned on their lights or sirens. Nevertheless, there were 17 bullet holes in the cab of Brown's truck when it was over. Brown did have a shotgun, of course. It was unloaded and "inoperative." Allegedly, the police shot into his car while it was parked in South Carolina, where Brown came to a stop and began talking to local officers. (One Georgia officer took the trouble to knock out the glass in the passenger window with the butt of his gun.)

The allegation that Brown was high on PCP came from a local police analysis of an improperly administered blood test. The cops first said that it showed Brown high on cocaine, then changed their story. The next day, when Brown was again arrested, he was not out careening around the countryside high on anything. He was at the Georgia War Veterans' Home in Augusta, visiting his father.

The file itself doesn't seem to be online, so we'll have to depend on that account for now. I'll keep my ears open for further news.

Elsewhere in Reason: My tribute to Brown.

Comments

crap-action-jackson|7.10.07 @ 10:42AM|#

Cops.

Anonymo the Anonymous|7.10.07 @ 10:46AM|#

Shilling for Big Sex Machines.

|7.10.07 @ 10:47AM|#

He wasn't fleeing the cops. He was trying to take them to the bridge.

|7.10.07 @ 10:56AM|#

de stijl gets my vote for thread winner.

|7.10.07 @ 11:03AM|#

Ten years ago I would have disregared this post.Radley and Reason changed my veiw point.I recently had a friend who was a deputy sherrif who quit to sell insurance.He said it was getting hard to tell the good guys from the bad.

Jack|7.10.07 @ 11:25AM|#

James Brown and Mayor Curley saved Boston from race riots when MLK was assasinated, and for that I'll be forever thankful

|7.10.07 @ 11:26AM|#

So, we're to believe that a simple fender bender led to months of harassment and a two-state police conspiracy to set up a well-known celebrity, complete with faked drug test results and 17 bullet holes in his car?

I find this one to be kind of dubious, especially given the description of the FBI file but lack of the file itself.

The Wine Commonsewer®|7.10.07 @ 11:31AM|#

Do you ever feel like Everything You Know Is Wrong?

Big Sigh.

It\'s a Man\'s World|7.10.07 @ 11:32AM|#

Southerners.

|7.10.07 @ 11:33AM|#

Guess which commenter in this thread is me?

|7.10.07 @ 11:47AM|#

Are you saying that Dan T. is really Jesse Walker?

highnumber|7.10.07 @ 11:59AM|#

Can't we Free James Brown already?

Wait. What? Oh.

I miss him.

|7.10.07 @ 12:28PM|#

I don't have anything useful to add to this thread, other than my sons' new favorite DVD is "The Blues Brothers," especially the James Brown and Ray Charles sequences. It sadden
is me no end that a man who brought so much joy was a target for harrassment by redneck cops. RIP James, we still see the light.

Oh, and yes, BB has a lot of foul language in it, but otherwise it's the perfect small boy movie: lots of car crashes where nobody gets hurt.

high on life|7.10.07 @ 2:05PM|#

Yeah, yeah, bad cops and all that, but that still doesn't explain that crazy-assed mug shot:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/jbrownmug1.html

|7.10.07 @ 2:29PM|#

That mugshot is from a domestic violence-ish incident thing. When I'm lounging around the house, my hair is sometimes like that too. He could have just gotten out of bed, whatever.

Scooby|7.10.07 @ 3:01PM|#

Ditto what JJIII said- he's in a freakin' bathrobe, ferchristsake. That's pretty solid evidence that he wasn't primped up to go out in public.

|7.11.07 @ 1:32PM|#

hmm