Dry Cleaner Calls in Favor to Get P. Diddy a Lights Blaring NYPD Escort

The elitist edge spreads, first it was Charlie Sheen in D.C., now it's P. Diddy in the Big Apple.

The NYPD this week provided a Midtown motorcade for rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs so he could make a $75,000 gig in New Jersey -- at the request of a dry cleaner, reports NyPo.

Here's the fascinating part of the NyPo report:

"After being repeatedly rebuffed by police officers on the street -- and a police lieutenant at the station house -- a dry cleaner claiming to represent Sean Combs [Diddy] apparently prevailed upon a sergeant to direct a police van driven by a police officer to escort Combs," the NYPD said...

The fireworks came after Upper East Side dry cleaner John Mahdessian told Page Six Monday that he called in favors from police pals to get Diddy's Escalade-and-Bentley motorcade a police detail complete with flashing lights...

The NYPD admitted the well-connected dry cleaner scored the help. The department said the police van escorted Diddy's parade of cars for one block, from West 35th Street near the Hammerstein to just near the Lincoln Tunnel entrance.

During a speech, How To Talk Code Like the Elites, in Boston last year at the Murphy-Wenzel seminars, I pointed out that it is not always the top person that is most important to know when it comes to getting things when dealing with a government bureaucracy. The key is to know who has the real power at different levels.

When governments get oppressive, the world really becomes like the world in the movie, Casablanca. So always pay attention to who has real power and when necessary stick a lawyer in the middle to keep from getting yourself into trouble.