Stop Snitchin'

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Has anyone heard about this?

It has been getting a lot of playtime in Milwaukee lately. It is a national campaign that wants people to stop snitchin' on people who commit crimes. It was apparently started by some thug in Baltimore

http://www.andycarvin.com/photos/dvd-1.jpg

The whole gist is that you can't trust the cops so you shouldn't snitch on people when you are a witness to a crime. Ironically, it also calls for people to snitch on those good citizens that do snitch to the cops.

Anyway, the matter has come to attention in Milwaukee lately in light of two seperate cases. There was a beating of a man, Frank Jude, by some off duty police officers in October of 2004. Progress was slow in arressting people for the beating because of a "Code of Silence" among police officers. They are just now in the middle of a trial and even though they do have some witnesses against the police officers there are a lot more that still are not talking.

The sescond case is two missing boys that have gone missing for over two weeks now. Police are convinced that there are people who know something, but no one has come forward with any information. They think that the Stop Snitchin' campaign has something to do with it.

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Now, in light of the "Code of Silence" and the Frank Jude beating, it is interesting to me that, perhaps, some people do have reason to not trust the police. However, is this any reason to allow crime to continue in your neighborhood? It is two strange counter-productive activites. The cops want people to come forward with info, but they themselves have a code of silence and while people who Stop Snitchin, even in light of not trusting police, are doing nothing but making their own neighborhoods unsafe and keeping two kids from their own neighborhood from being found.

It is a pretty sad statement of the times, IMO, that things have gotten so bad. Cops above the law and criminals glorified over law abiding citizens.

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Raising nice, white middle-class kids got a lot more complicated when the Drug Culture Don't Nark ethos came into play.

"Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty" didn't particularly help matters.

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There was a fairly large to-do about a bunch of "Stop snitchin'" T-shirts here in Boston over the winter. The state was claiming that they were being worn by gang members while they sat in the gallery in courtrooms with the intent of intimidating witnesses. The mayor of Boston (Mumbles Menino) tried to have the sale of them banned but that was laughed out of discussion pretty quickly.

From Wikipedia:
"In Boston in December of 2005, faced with a murder rate at 10-year high, mayor Thomas Menino announced that he would begin confiscating Stop Snitchin' shirts from local stores. Though Menino rapidly backed away from mandatory confiscation to endorse voluntary removal of the shirts by store owners, his proposals sparked considerable controversy locally and nationally. Though many saw the initiative as ineffective, counterproductive, or misleading, some community members of high crime inner city areas such as Dorchester defended the move as important to conquering fear on the streets and assisting in criminal prosecutions."

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It's worse than sad...it's pathetic. What is even MORE
bothersome to ME PERSONALLY ... is the police using known
criminals via threats to get convictions on other people
who they may know nothing about. Cutting them deals. We
need a conviction on this crime, so if you ( you, being 2
time loser criminal Mr. Z) IF you will testify against MR. X
(we don't CARE if you don't know the guy) then you, Mr Z.
all you have to serve is 1 year instead of the 5 years you'll
get otherwise, then out on parole, while Mr. X. (innocent OR
guilty, who cares ) serves 10-15 years for a crime he maybe
didn't even commit. But the police HAVE TO DO SOMETHING,
don't they? When you've got a crime with ZERO suspects,
your boss is breathing down YOUR neck - all you care about
is closing this file. WHY WOULDN'T ANYONE SAY WHATEVER
THEY TELL THEM TO SAY?? In a way, it is THIS kind of
snitchin' that really sucks, in my opinion.

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fishin' wrote:

The mayor of Boston (Mumbles Menino) tried to have the sale of them banned but that was laughed out of discussion pretty quickly.

Might have been a lot more effective if he just barred them from the courthouse on grounds of witness intimidation.

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babsatamelia,

You find offering deals for information more bothersome than people not snitching on known criminals???

I understand your sentiment about people saying anything just to get a deal, and I think it is a legitimate concern, but offering deals is a major tool the police have and does do a lot of good. I agree that it should not be used just in order to say they made an arrest, but don't think it is anywhere near as bad as people not snitching on known criminals right in their own neighborhood because some thug on the street told them not to trust the cops.

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This is a major problem which i believe derives from the unique cultural relationship of black Americans with police forces.

In Columbus, Ohio, there is a neighborhood known as the Linden neighborhood. There is a broad demographic there, but basically, it is a neighborhood of comfortable working class and at least modestly affluent middle class blacks. For many years, that neighborhood was haunted by a rapist, who became known as the Linden rapist. He was eventually apprehended, but no thanks to the residents of the neighborhood--he was taken down in a police chase following his last rape. Robert Patton, Jr., copped not only to the 19 rapes which had been ascribed to the Linden rapist, but to a total of 40 rapes over a period of more than a decade. Had anyone come forward with information early in his career, dozens of women, at the least, may have been spared their ordeal. Residents of the Linden neighborhood pleaded with their neighbors to come forward with information, and went to the extreme of putting up posters all over the neighborhood appealing for information to capture the Linden rapist--all to no avail.

It is, of course, possible that no one came forward because no one had any information to offer. It is difficult, however, to escape the conclusion that in that case, as in so many others, the local population simply would not provide any information to "the Man." Overwhelmingly, black criminals target other blacks.

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Sad. You would hope protecting your family would override any Damn the Man mentality that might exist. It is difficult to wrap my mind around the rational.

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Unfortunately, "Black Power" frequently means "Castrate the Honkey. and Down with the Establishment."

I admire what Bill and Melinda Gates are doing with substantial, practical donations in Africa. I wish some other billionaire would tackle well-financed reform in the schools of an inner city.

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I thought that NOT admitting to seeing anything - especially in the
big city culture is kind of OLD NEWS. Police officers go door to
door to canvass a neighborhood, asking neighbors next door if
anyone saw or heard anything during the time, and in the area
where a crime was committed and nobody saw anything AND
nobody heard anything. I don't think it represents anything
drastically new in our culture. I was under the impression that
this type of behavior has been kind of 'status quo' for the apathy
level of a public that doesn't want to "get involved." OR
how many years has it been that among young boys, then older
boys, then young men would not be caught dead being known as
a snitch, a rat. That they "ratted somebody out". Look at the
movie Goodfellas how Ray Liotta gets out of his first time
in jail and everyone is throwing him a gigantic party because he
got nailed, went to jail, but he didn't breathe a word about anyone
else who was involved. He was loved by all the guys because he
wasn't (what was the term in the old days?) that he wasn't a "stool
pigeon" & THIS made him a neighborhood good guy.
'One of the goodfellas' even though later on in life he DID rat
out his buddies & go into a witness protection program. "Rat on"
is another way of saying the same thing. You don't "rat on" your
buddies.
Another movie example would be Al Pacino in Scent of A Woman
when he is defending Charlie - the young kid who went on the
trip with him to New York City. He talked about NOT BEING a
'RAT' as if it was the lowest form of life on the planet to be a man
who rats on his fellow classmates (in this case). Now, this was a
popular movie as was Goodfellas - both of which admire & defend
the idea that the "proper" thing to do is to mind your own business
and never rat on the bad guys even if you know who they are.
I don't see this as NEW - aside from the semantics. It might be
CALLED something new now: "stop snitchin" but this kind of
behavior has a LONG history in American culture, don't you agree?
I don't agree with it necessarily, although I DO sympathize for
some people who are genuinely AFRAID to tell anything to the
police. Where are the police going to be, if some bad guy comes
back looking for who ratted him out? I don't personally agree
with the decision not to admit to being a witness to a crime, but
I CAN understand why some people might be afraid of the
possible future ramifications of their behavior if they DO talk.

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It goes back to Kitty Genovese (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese ) and earlier.

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Yes.. That makes perfect sense.

I don't suppose it crossed your mind that the two movies you reference to bolster your argument are works of fiction though eh?

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bookmark, time to sleep.

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Besides being works of fiction, like fishin' already pointed out, the entire premise is very different. You are talking about criminals not ratting out other criminals. The stop snitchin' campaign is targeted at everyday people in the neighborhood, including law abiding citizens. Not snitching on criminals, not because you are a criminal yourself, but because of some perceived distrust, real or not, of the police is harmful to you and the entire neighborhood. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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**Well now that IS true Fishin - that's a valid point,
THOSE 2 MOVIES ARE FICTION. But, don"t you agree that often
our fiction is BASED on some fundamental truth of our society,
otherwise it would all be like science fiction, wouldn't it?
America's fascination with The Sopranos & going back back, and
even farther back until the 1st motion picture about the Mafia
almost rivals England's fascination with the Royal Family.
**Haven't you EVER felt that your popularity in
grade school, middle & even high school for example,
would be adversely affected and YOU labeled a total geek for
snitching on someone else to a teacher?
**Mind you, I'M IN NO WAY TRYING to glorify irresponsible
and senseless behavior like: "Don't ever talk, don't ever tell."
and "Don't Snitch"
**Personally,YES I DO believe there is ALWAYS plenty not to trust
about ANY powerful governing entity (including a police force) and
I try to make it MY personal lifelong committment that if my life's
path never, ever intersects with a police officer in any way, size,
shape or fashion ... that will be so much the better & safer for me.
I mean, even a single traffic ticket - nada, never. That is safety to
me. The larger the govt organization is, the more dangerous
the interactions with it would be, in my humble opinion. I may
sound like a nutcase, I realize... but, we are right now undergoing
a process of giving up so much of our freedoms, under the guise
of keeping us safe from "TERRORISM??" Now that really is terrifying !!
**Because, there IS an underculture existing beneath the surface of
what WE see everyday going on in our country that I don't want any
part of. So why do we need a Witness Protection Program in
this country ?

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Stop Snitchin'

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