Music

Kodak Black Arrested Less Than 1 Year After Donald Trump Commuted Previous Prison Sentence

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Rapper Kodak Black is facing more legal trouble at the start of 2022. The performer, whose real name is Bill Kapri, was arrested Saturday morning in Pompano Beach, Florida, on a trespassing charge. The arrest comes almost a year after President Donald Trump commuted Kapri’s federal prison sentence on his final day in office.

Kapri was arrested just before 1:30 a.m. ET, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said, reports Local10. The circumstances of the arrest were not made immediately available. Kapri, who was born Octave Dieuson, was born and grew up in Pompano Beach, north of Miami.

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After he was released from custody, Kapri took to his Instagram page to explain his side of the story, reports HipHopDX. “You know what, stay out the hood,” he said in an Instagram video. “Everything that I was trying to do, I always keep the hood in my mix. I always steady slide back to the hood. I don’t need to be going through there. I don’t need to be through there. But how can you tell a nโ€” who really from the streets, who really doing his sโ€”, really did my sโ€” out there.”

“Nโ€”s know what the fโ€” going on with me,” the rapper continued. “They can never bash me, never say, ‘Oh I can’t come back to the hood.’ Never gonna say, ‘Oh yeah he ain’t been back to the hood in a long time’ … All that other sโ€”, that over with.”

The “Roll in Peace” rapper was among the most high-profile people whose sentences were commuted during Trump’s final day in office in January 2021. He served about half of a three-year federal prison sentence for falsifying documents to purchase weapons at a Miami gun store, the Associated Press reported. However, Kapri still faced a charge of criminal sexual assault in South Carolina. In April 2021, Kapri agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to 18 months probation.

Kapri later failed a drug test and was ordered to spend 90 days in a rehab treatment center. He completed the rehab stint in December after his lawyer, Bradford Cohen, told TMZ the judge was satisfied with Kapri’s progress. Kapri is “looking forward to making good music, and is going to try to stay away from people, places, and things that would put him in harm’s way, or trigger him to use again,” Cohen told TMZ at the time.

In June, Kapri was honored for his philanthropy, with former Broward commissioner and mayor Dale Holness issuing the proclamation, reports the Sun Sentinel. The proclamation praised Kapri for paying college fees for the three children of two FBI agents killed during a raid in Sunrise, Florida in February. Kapri also paid the funeral costs for a South Carolina police officer and donated $100,000 to the Nova Southeastern University law school in memory of a victim in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting.