The Roanoke Times | File 2005

The Roanoke Times | File 2005

Sheriff Mike Brown of Bedford County credits Shaquille O'Neal with helping raise awareness of sexual predators.

BEDFORD -- Problems surrounding Shaquille O'Neal's latest rap video spread to Bedford County Wednesday where Sheriff Mike Brown said his department is terminating its relationship with the NBA superstar.

O'Neal's likeness will no longer be used by Operation Blue Ridge Thunder, a unit of the department that investigates Internet sexual predators, Brown said.

His decision came after O'Neal was asked Tuesday to return an honorary deputy's badge to a sheriff's department in Arizona as the result of recently released footage of O'Neal rapping. In the video, O'Neal, now with the Phoenix Suns, mocked his former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant. The video includes offensive and racially derogatory language.

Brown said Wednesday afternoon he had not seen the video but he had spoken to a close mutual friend of his and O'Neal's, a Los Angeles police officer.

O'Neal "is really devastated," Brown said. "He knows what he said was inappropriate."

O'Neal became a reserve deputy with the Bedford County Sheriff's Department in 2004. When his first term expired at the end of 2007, O'Neal, because of a heavy load of other commitments, did not seek to be sworn in again, Brown said.

O'Neal served as a spokesman for the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a division of the federal Department of Justice. Brown said O'Neal will be expected to surrender his ICAC badge as a result of his behavior.

"I hope people will look at what he has done not only for us but for ICAC across the country," Brown said.

He credits O'Neal's work as spokesman of the task force for drawing national attention to sexual offenders who use the Internet to prey on children. Brown said he hopes people will remember O'Neal's contributions to public safety -- instead of the video.

Posted on TMZ.com, a celebrity news and gossip Web site, O'Neal can be seen rapping that "Kobe couldn't do with me." O'Neal and Bryant won three consecutive NBA titles from 2000 to 2002, but in the video O'Neal chided Bryant for not being able to win a championship without him.

"I was freestyling. That's all. It was all done in fun. Nothing serious whatsoever," O'Neal told ESPN.com Monday.

But in an era when cellular phones with video cameras are abundant, Brown questioned why O'Neal would make statements he did not want in the media in a public setting.

"I am assuming he assumed it [the rap] would be confidential," Brown said.

This is not the first time O'Neal has drawn attention in Southwest Virginia.

In 2006 he was part of a botched child pornography raid in Pittsylvania County when an Internet provider supplied an incorrect physical address to deputies. O'Neal acted in the capacity of an investigator during the raid in which a farmer and his family reportedly were terrified when deputies from Bedford and Pittsylvania counties searched their Gretna home.

Investigators identified the correct target and about a month later arrested another Gretna resident after recovering a computer containing images of child pornography.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.