"I quit everything but music," Meek Mill said repeatedly after losing a civil rights lawsuit against the Philadelphia Police Department on Thursday, May 1.
As previously reported, Meek filed the suit earlier this year against two cops for illegally detaining him on Halloween 2012.
Police stopped Meek's vehicle and said they smelled weed they approached. When asked if his car could be searched Meek said no. The rapper and his three passengers were detained while a search warrant could be obtained.
They were held for 10 hours. A subsequent search of the vehicle turned up nothing. The delay caused Meek to miss a $22,000 private jet flight to Atlanta and a $39,000appearance fee.
The Dream Chasers Records CEO said the attention received from the stop negatively impacted his negotiations with Puma for an endorsement. Instead of the $2 million deal he was seeking, Meek had to settle for $650,000.
On Thursday an eight-member panel, made up of mostly white jurors ruled that Meek's civil rights had not been violated.
"Although we voted unanimously that Mr. Williams' Fourth Amendment rights were not violated, we feel strongly both the plaintiff and defendant were in the wrong and made mistakes," the panel wrote to the judge.
"They ain't from where I'm from," Meek told Philly.com. "I don't really expect them to understand."
Meek felt all along that the traffic stop was racially motivated.
"In neighborhoods like where I come from, four black males in a car . . . we're always being asked to be searched," he testified on Monday.
Meek's lawyer, Dennis Cogan, had asked the panel to award his client more than $400,000
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