New York City Cops (song)

"New York City Cops", written in response to the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo by four plainclothes police officers, was released along with "Hard to Explain" as a double A-side single on June 25, 2001, through RCA Records in Australia and Europe.^[2][3][4] Both tracks would later be included on their debut studio album, Is This It (2001).^[5] The song features the refrain "New York City cops, they ain’t too smart."^[6] Since the American CD had not been released yet, the song was removed after the September 11 attacks. The band did so after they witnessed the "valiant response" of the city's police department during the tragedy, feeling that it would be "wrong to release it during these highly sensitive times". They replaced the song with the newly recorded "When It Started".^[7] The vinyl release retained the original track list, due to its release falling on September 11, 2001.^[8]

The Strokes continued to perform the song live despite the September 11 attacks. During their performance in Toronto on October 2, 2001, Casablancas stated, "I liked this fucking song and it's ruined. We live in New York. It's fucked up. The cops have killed a lot more people than they're saying and that's the fuckin' truth."^[9]

The song was performed at a rally for Senator Bernie Sanders at the Whittemore Center Arena in Durham, New Hampshire on February 10, 2020.^[10] According to some accounts, "New York City Cops" was not on the band's setlist, but the Strokes performed the song after taking issue with lights being turned up and attempts to stop crowd-surfing fans.^[6]