Texas Police Calls For Boycott of Time Warner : Pop: Law enforcement group protests release of Ice-T song and threatens to demonstrate at July shareholder’s meeting.

Texas law enforcement officials, angered by a song by Los Angeles rapper Ice-T that they feel advocates killing police, threatened Thursday to demonstrate in Beverly Hills against the company that distributes the rapper’s albums.

The Combined Law Enforcement Assn. of Texas, which called Wednesday for a boycott of Time Warner Inc., the distributor, said the rally would be held at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting unless Time Warner disassociates itself from the song and apologizes to officers nationwide.

The shareholders’ meeting is scheduled for July 16 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

“Our quarrel is not with Ice-T, but with the beautiful people that run Time Warner who like to present themselves as being in the business of family entertainment,” Mark Clark, director of government relations for the association, said in a telephone interview preceding a press conference in Arlington, Tex., on Thursday.

“Our quarrel is with the people who made a decision to reap huge dividends by distributing music that advocates the murder of police officers. Our goal is to educate the average Time Warner shareholder as to how low this corporation has sunk to earn a dollar.”

Time Warner officials declined to comment, but released a statement that said: “Time Warner is committed to the free expression of ideas for all our authors, journalists, recording artists, screenwriters, actors and directors. We believe this commitment is crucial to a democratic society, where the full range of opinion and thought--whether we agree with it or not--must be able to find an outlet.”

The law enforcement association, known as CLEAT, objects to a song titled “Cop Killer” on the just-released “Body Count” album. The lyrics in dispute include these:

I got my 12-gauge sawed off

I got my headlights turned off

I’m ‘bout to bust some shots off

I’m ‘bout to dust some cops off

The law enforcement association, a chapter of the Communication Workers of America that represents 12,000 police officers, is also calling for a boycott of Six Flags Over Texas, a Time-Warner amusement park, and asked the Houston City Council to refuse to renew a multimillion-dollar cable television contract with Warner Cable, a subsidiary of Time Warner.

Ice-T, who helped popularize the controversial “gangsta” school of Los Angeles rap music and also played the part of a police officer in the film “New Jack City,” could not be reached for comment.

But James Bernard, senior editor of the Source magazine, the nation’s premier rap magazine, called the threatened boycott an attack on black art.

“Let’s not be mistaken here,” Bernard said Thursday. “This is an attack on rap. The police in Texas are trying to scare companies into silencing the viewpoint of rap artists. What Ice-T is saying is not polite, but it’s not irresponsible either.”

Texas police aren’t the first law enforcement officials to voice concern.

The Fraternal Order of the Police, a 76-year-old Oklahoma City organization that functions as a bargaining agent for some 220,000 law enforcement officials around the nation, drafted a resolution three years ago advising its membership to “refuse to work at or provide security for concerts by any group advocating violence against police officers.”