Rob Latour / AP
In this Monday, June 1, 2015 file photo, T.I., left, and Tiny arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of “Entourage” at the Westwood Regency Village Theatre. Rapper T.I. and his wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris are under investigation by police in Los Angeles after a sexual abuse allegation. Los Angeles Police officer Rosario Cervantes said Tuesday, May 18, 2021 that an active investigation is underway.
Tuesday, May 18, 2021 | 7:15 p.m.
A sexual assault allegation made against celebrity couple Clifford Harris and Tameka Harris — known professionally as “T.I.” and “Tiny” — in Las Vegas this month was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired, Metro Police said Tuesday.
The announcement came the same day the New York Times reported an “active” criminal investigation in Los Angeles involving women who allege the couple drugged and sexually assaulted them, according to the national newspaper.
The Las Vegas report, filed May 8, was in relation to an alleged assault that occurred in 2010, Metro said.
A woman told the Times that she was drugged and assaulted by the couple in Las Vegas, where she met them.
Afterwards, she was taken to Los Angeles where the Harrises “again forced (her) to engage in sexual acts,” the Times reported. Her attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, told the newspaper that he expected the probe to be referred to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Metro said in a statement that cases that fall outside the statute of limitations are closed as “standard procedure.”
Although Nevada law changed in 2015 to extend the period to report a crime from four to 20 years, it doesn’t apply retroactively, the statement said.
Blackburn, the attorney, informed law enforcement in Georgia and California in February calling for criminal probes against the Harrises on behalf of about a dozen alleged victims of the couple and people in their entourage, the Times reported.
The Times report said that representatives of the Harrises described the allegations as “a sordid shakedown campaign.”
An attorney representing the couple told the Times that they hadn’t been contacted by officials in either state and that the anonymity from one of the alleged victims prevented them from being “in a position to disprove or refute her allegations, or even examine them.”
Clifford Harris, a multiplatinum rapper from Atlanta, in June was presented the honorary “key” to the Las Vegas Strip and a Clark County certificate proclaiming “Tip T.I. Harris Day” during a panel he hosted on racial justice.
