Watch Meek Mill’s Cousins Recall Rapper’s Horrific Arrest

Meek Mill was arrested on January 24th, 2007 – one day after a member of Philadelphia’s Narcotics Field Unit (NFU) claimed to see the rapper selling crack to an informant. According to three of Meek’s cousins, who shared a house with the emcee, the arrest was horrifically violent.

“When I first ran to the door, they were running up my steps,” Rasson Parker told Rolling Stone in a video interview, as part of an profile on Meek Mill’s arrest. “It was like three cops – two of them had his feet, and one of them had his arms. They basically used his head as a battering ram.”

After breaking through the door, the police allegedly swung the rapper around, causing his skull to collide with the base of a coffee table. Meek, bleeding from the mouth and eyes, began to slip in and out of consciousness. “They were beating us down,” says Ikeem Parker. “They were kicking us. I turned my head right, and they kicked me in my face. Mainly they were targeting Meek. I don’t know why they were targeting him so much.”

“At one point in time, Meek was in the kitchen – [one officer] was pounding on him, just hitting him and hitting him,” Rasson Parker says of one officer. “The one time I looked, and he hit me. And I see Meek’s eyes closed like he was asleep. And before Meek’s head hit the ground, the guy hit him again, which actually woke him back up.”

The NFU officers allegedly took money from the men’s pockets. “Not in a plastic bag or nothing,” adds William Bailey. “They take our money out of our pockets and put it in their pockets.”

In his Rolling Stone profile, writer Paul Solotaroff documents the jailed rapper’s extensive legal troubles and the devastation to his life and career. “I won’t let [my family] come,” Meek said from prison. “If they see me like this – fucked-up beard, hair all ganked – then it’s like I’m really in here. Which I’m not.”