Rap A Lot Records
Houston Texas

Record label releases rap album attacking DEA after drug probe
Posted: Tuesday, October 03, 2000
MARY LEE GRANT
The Associated Press
HOUSTON - A record label whose founder was under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration is releasing an album that taunts the agency and talks about killing informants.

DEA officials say they are disturbed by the contents of the CD, which mentions agents by name.

The boasts by rap artist Brad "Scarface" Jordan, whose album was being released Tuesday, stem from a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno from Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., sent on behalf of the rapper's label, Houston-based Rap-A-Lot Records, and its owner James A. Prince.

"Can't be stopped. Not even by a badge," one song declares, "(DEA Agent Jack ) Schumacher's been chasin' me. Tryin' to set me up. Bustin' down my streets. Lockin'up my dog, to see if he can catch me. But I don't sell no dope. ...(expletive) the DEA."

Waters' letter asks for an investigation of the DEA, but she denied a report Monday in The Dallas Morning News that she intervened to stop the investigation of Prince.

"My letter speaks for itself," Waters said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Nowhere in my letter does it ask to halt an investigation. My letter was based on the allegations that Mr. Prince was making about harassment and fear for his life. I told him if you don't have anything to hide, come to Washington to file a report."

On his CD, Jordan, who entered a guilty plea last year to a misdemeanor marijuana charge, brags of the "Rap-A-Lot mafia's" ability to derail a DEA investigation and the careers of drug agents.

In her letter, Waters said racial slurs, harassment, and racial profiling may have been involved in the investigation.

Neither Reno nor Waters put any pressure on the DEA to stop the investigation, said Ernest Howard, special agent-in-charge of the Houston office of the agency.

" Mr. Prince is black and I'm black," Howard said Monday. "I'm the one that assigned the case. I wasn't out to investigate a black man. I don't care if a trafficker is green, yellow or blue. I assigned it because there were allegations of drug trafficking."

Prince, who has not been charged as a result of the investigation, has said his company has done nothing illegal. Phone calls placed Monday by The Associated Press to his offices were not returned.

Prince has been arrested twice on minor drug and weapons charges that later were dropped. His label released a 1993 Geto Boys album containing lyrics in which the rappers threaten to shoot police. Prince complained on the best-selling album of a DEA conspiracy to target his record label.

"The mere fact that they would go that far in the back of my mind substantiates our investigation in that case," Howard said.

"It's typical gangster rap. They criticize law enforcement and criticize those providing allegations. They have made past accusations of police brutality and now they are talking about violence against people in law enforcement. There's a double-edged sword."

Howard said he thinks songs that say there is nothing wrong with harming law enforcement ends up hurting young people.

"They think because these are rock stars they are telling the truth," he said. "It really skews things."

He said inner city youths wouldn't consider him a role model "but every kid in the ... inner city knows who Scarface is."

Waters, in her letter to DEA officials, cited Schumacher's involvement in six fatal shootings. Authorities said each shooting involving the agent was justified.

Schumacher, a 27-year law enforcement veteran who directed the case through more than 20 state and federal convictions as well as cocaine seizures in Oklahoma City, Beaumont and Houston, was transferred last spring from active investigation to a desk job.

"It was my idea to reassign him for his own protection and the protection of this case," Howard said. "In this case if he did everything right from A to Z it would have been wrong to some people."

Jordan, whose new album is called "The Last of a Dying Breed," was one of several Rap-A-Lot associates arrested in a DEA inquiry and pleaded guilty in 1999 to misdemeanor marijuana charges in connection with the case.

DEA agent barred from investigation

Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) - The lead agent in a probe of a rap recording company has been barred from involvement in the case just weeks after he testified before a Congressional committee that high-ranking politicians pressured federal officials to shut down the investigation.

Drug Enforcement Administration agent Jack Schumacher was taken off a drug probe of James A. Prince and his associates at Houston-based Rap-A-Lot Records and removed as liaison with the Harris County District Attorney's office in a move his attorney, Michael Hinton, said appears to be revenge for his testimony before Congress.

"What else could this be but retaliation?" Hinton told The Dallas Morning News for Saturday editions. "Jack Schumacher has got a tremendous background in this case. He knows it better than anybody. And less than two weeks after he tells Congress what went wrong, this happens?"

Schumacher and three Houston Police Department drug investigators in the Rap-A-Lot case told a congressional committee this month they were making substantial progress until the head of the DEA's Houston office ordered it stopped because of political pressure.

A DEA spokesman in Houston wouldn't comment and said the agency's Houston chief, Ernest L. Howard, was unavailable for comment. Howard has denied shutting down the investigation.

But officers testified Howard stopped the investigation shortly after U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, wrote a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno asking her to investigate allegations by Prince that he was subjected to racial slurs and profiling, and that he feared for his life by "rogue DEA agents."

Howard, who is black, has said the agency has not harassed Prince.

Prince has been arrested twice on minor drug and weapons charges that later were dropped. He complained on a best-selling 1993 Geto Boys album of a DEA conspiracy to target his record label. His company recently released a recording by Brad "Scarface" Jordan which taunts Schumacher and threatens to destroy agents' careers and kill informants. Jordan was arrested in the DEA inquiry and pleaded guilty in 1999 to misdemeanor marijuana charges.

Schumacher had 19 complaints filed against him while he was a Houston police officer and four as a DEA agent. He has been involved in nine shootings in which someone was killed. All were found to be justified.

He directed the case through more than 20 state and federal convictions.

Prosecutors said they worry Schumacher is being is being punished, and they will miss his expertise.

"I'm at least suspect about what's going on," assistant Harris County prosecutor Craig Goodhart told the Morning News. "Limiting our access to Jack makes it a little difficult for us to do things...He's been a clearinghouse for us. He's got a wealth of information, and we'd like to be able to use it."

Rap-A-Lot probe was to continue, DEA says

Attorney general requested inquiry into alleged civil rights abuses, but case was somehow closed
By Suzanne Gamboa
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Janet Reno requested an inquiry into allegations of civil rights abuses in a Houston drug probe, but did not order the case closed, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration said Thursday.
The inquiry Reno requested led to a series of events that ultimately resulted in the 1999 suspension of a joint DEA-Houston Police Department investigation of Rap-A-Lot Records and its founder James Prince.
DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall said any shutdown of the case was contrary to his orders.
"At no time did anyone tell me the criminal investigation was closed down," Marshall said. "And at no time did I have any reason to believe this criminal investigation was closed down."
The investigation's suspension prompted a probe by the House Government Reform Committee into whether political pressure led to the shutdown of the investigation.
Thursday was the second day of hearings on the matter. Committee members questioned why an investigation that had netted 20 convictions, including one for murder, was abruptly halted.
They also questioned why Prince's allegations, a suspect in a drug investigation, were given enough credibility to cause the temporary suspension of the lead investigator and his eventual transfer.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, pleaded for Reno's help in an Aug. 20, 1999, letter saying Prince had been subjected to racial slurs, was illegally searched and stopped numerous times on "dark stretches of Texas highways."
Waters also told Reno that Prince feared for his life "at the hands of rogue officers" in the Houston DEA.
"Your agency truly doesn't look good," Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., told Marshall. "It doesn't look good because it looks like an investigation was suspended ... because a subject of an investigation was able to go to a member of Congress and when the member of Congress issued a complaint to the Justice Department you all jumped overboard to accommodate."
On Wednesday, the Rap-A-Lot lead investigator and three Houston police detectives said they were told in September 1999 the case was shut down because of political pressure.
Their testimony conflicted with that of Houston DEA Special Agent Ernest Howard, who said he suspended investigative work without permission from supervisors pending the outcome of the internal DEA investigation of Prince's allegations.
Prince is black, as are Waters, Howard and two of the police officers in the investigation.
The witnesses were recalled Thursday to clarify the inconsistencies.
"I know what the truth is. I know what I did and didn't do," Howard said, adding he would work one more year at the Houston job.
Howard's recollection of his action on the case was corroborated in a letter written to committee chairman Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and James Nims, the supervisor of the group investigating Rap-A-Lot.
Nims said Howard had told him the case was suspended pending the conclusion of the internal investigation and "there was to be no enforcement action taken unless it was cleared through the chain of command."
The internal investigation found that Prince's allegations against lead investigator Jack Schumacher were unsubstantiated. Another agent accused of stealing a defendant's necklace was reprimanded for not following procedures for handling evidence.