Rapper Afroman sued by cops after using their faces in music videos

COLUMBUS - Seven law enforcement officers in Ohio are suing rapper Afroman for using footage of their raid on his house in 2022 in videos and merchandise for commercial purposes, according to a complaint.

Four deputies, two sergeants and a detective, all with the Adams County Sheriff’s Office in West Union, filed a lawsuit in the Court of Common Pleas in Adams County on March 13, the complaint said.

It listed Afroman as a defendant using his real name, Joseph E. Foreman, along with two firms that market and distribute his material and three unidentified business entities.

In the complaint, the officers – named in the Guardian as Shawn D. Cooley, Justin Cooley, Michael D. Estep, Shawn D. Grooms, Brian Newland, Lisa Phillips and Randolph L. Walters Jr – objected to Mr Foreman’s use of their images for “commercial purposes, to promote his ‘Afroman’ brand”, claiming that he was using the images to sell products and promote his tours.

The filing said the rapper’s actions had caused them to suffer “humiliation, ridicule, mental distress, embarrassment and loss of reputation”, and listed several counts of unauthorised use of their personas and invasion of privacy.

The officers are seeking damages, including money from the profits he made from using their images, and a court injunction to remove the material, it said.

The Guardian reported that each officer is seeking damages of US$25,000 (S$33,300) per four counts.

In August 2022, the complaint said, officers raided Mr Foreman’s residence in Winchester, Ohio, acting on a search warrant.

It cited kidnapping and drug trafficking as reasons for the search, Ms Anna Castellini, his lawyer, said in an e-mail statement on Friday.

“They didn’t find anything illegal in the house,” she said.

Mr Bob Ruebusch, chief deputy at the sheriff’s office, said in a telephone interview on Friday that no charges had resulted from the raid.

Mr Foreman, 48, who is best known for the 2000 song Because I Got High, was not home during the raid, but a security camera system and his wife, using her phone camera, recorded the “faces and bodies” of the officers while they were on the property, the lawsuit said.

The rapper used the footage in music videos, in promotional material for his tours and on merchandise, the lawsuit said, including shirts imprinted with the faces of some of the officers.

In an Instagram post, the filing said, he wore one such shirt and thanked one of the officers for helping him get 5.4 million views on TikTok.

“Congratulations again, you’re famous for all the wrong reasons,” he wrote in the caption of the post, published in September 2022.

Earlier in the post, he called an officer “Police Officer Poundcake”, a reference to one of the officers in the footage who glances at a glass-domed dish holding a cake.

The document also referred to an interview on the YouTube channel VladTV, in which Mr Foreman talks about how the raid inspired him to write the song Lemon Pound Cake.

“It made the sheriff want to put down his gun and cut him a slice,” he belts out in the music video for the song.

Another music video, for the song Will You Help Me Repair My Door, has garnered more than three million views on YouTube.

In an Instagram post this week, Mr Foreman claimed money was stolen, and his security cameras were disconnected during the raid.

The post included a statement from Ms Castellini saying they were “planning to countersue for the unlawful raid, money being stolen, and for the undeniable damage this had on my client’s family, career and property”.

Mr Robert Klingler, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said no court date had been set yet.

In an interview with NPR published on Friday, Mr Foreman said his immediate reaction to the lawsuit was “a drop of anger, disbelief and a little anxiety, followed by tons of laughter”.

He added that he was in the process of pursuing a defamation lawsuit against the police, and that his legal team would launch a countersuit.

“I want to sue them for stealing my money, I want to sue them for writing ‘kidnapping’ on a warrant and making me suffer financially in my industry because just that accusation makes people raise an eyebrow about you,” he added. NYTIMES