"Cop Killer" is a song by American heavy metal band Body Count. Released on the group's 1992 self-titled debut album. The song's lyrics about "cop killing" were criticized by President of the United States George H. W. Bush[4] and Vice President Dan Quayle.[4] Ice-T has called "Cop Killer" a "protest record".[5] He eventually recalled the album and rereleased it without the song.[1]

Some critics argued that the song could cause crime and violence.[4][12] Dennis R. Martin, the former president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, argued:

The misuse of the First Amendment is graphically illustrated in Time Warner's attempt to insert into the mainstream culture the vile and dangerous lyrics of the Ice-T song entitled "Cop Killer". The Body Count album containing "Cop Killer" was shipped throughout the United States in miniature body bags. Only days before distribution of the album was voluntarily suspended, Time Warner flooded the record market with a half million copies. The "Cop Killer" song has been implicated in at least two shooting incidents and has inflamed racial tensions in cities across the country. Those who work closely with the families and friends of slain officers volunteering for the American Police Hall of Fame and Museum are outraged by the message of "Cop Killer". It is an affront to the officers—144 in 1992 alone—who have been killed in the line of duty while the police was upholding the laws of our society and protecting all its citizens.[13]

Ice-T stated of the song, "I'm singing in the first person as a character who is fed up with police brutality. I ain't never killed no cop. I felt like it a lot of times. But I never did it. If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut."[16]

In a July 1992 editorial in The Wall Street Journal defending his company's involvement with the song, Time Warner co-CEO Gerald M. Levin repeated this defense, writing that rather than "finding ways to silence the messenger", critics and listeners should be "heeding the anguished cry contained in his message".[17]