According to the local daily, the “Stop Snitching” movement has come to town. Police report that investigations regarding three recent murders were held up due to a lack of any of the many witnesses coming forward to testify. Cops are frustrated, but suspicious citizens will no longer believe that police are either neutral parties or interested in helping people find justice.
Police serve many functions, and can choose to act as either prosecution or a judge in various circumstances. When they are investigating a crime, police serve as agents of the prosecution, collecting evidence and witnesses to use in the trial against the defendant suspects. When a white cop asks a black mother to give evidence against a black neighbor’s son, she is likely to evince a strong reticence to appear in a white court, in front a white judge and a white jury, to dis on the kid she watched grow up next door.
Intersecting this is a movement to test DNA in all death row cases in order to prove that quite a number of people on death row got there on accident — and typically these accidents are the result of overzealous police work: poor witness identification due to police prodding; poor evidence collection, or cherry-picked evidence gathered by biased police; police deliberately planting evidence or suggesting details for witness write-ups.
If there was some general sense that police acted fairly as agents of citizens during investigations, and were not biased towards ‘making a case’, then there would probably have never been a ‘Stop Snitching’ movement. But as long as cops work to cram blacks and browns into jails as fast as possible, this movement will only grow.
[Edit: Scott Henson's been writing about 'Stop Snitching' in Austin for three years, so it's not exactly a new thing here.]
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5 Responses:
April 28th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Like most things of the black community I think Aaron Magruder’s Boondocks take on it is probably the definitive statement on the “stop snitchin” thing
April 28th, 2008 at 11:05 am
“Omerta” may be a Sicilian word, but the concept occurs in any society that is subjugated to another. An initiatory group’s secrecy oaths are in the same box, even if the organization is a recognized part of the the society (e.g. Hopi Kiva societies, the Masons, etc.) This is a question of the group’s survival.
Blacks have good historical reasons not to trust white authorities, and might view a Black cop as a quisling. There have been enough — well, way too many — young Black and Hispanic males killed by APD officers recently to give the non-white community any reason to trust the police. When you add the recent debacle in NYC and the Great West Texas Pogrom of 2008 to this … .
April 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
There’s also a lot of details about the Sean Bell situation that aren’t getting mentioned in the media, as evidenced by the letter below (reprinted from a LJ law enforcement blog). Posted in 2 comments due to length:
An Open Letter to the Media
Anonymous
April 28, 2008
To Whom This May Concern,
Your coverage of the Sean Bell incident from beginning to end has been absolutely horrible, irresponsible and criminal. Not only have you chosen to selectively cover bits and pieces in the case, but you have also fanned the flames of racial tensions that are undeniably alive in New York City, partially created by your irresponsible and sensational reporting.
Sean Bell and his friends were not saints as you make them out to be. They were the scourge of the city and responsible for countless deaths, violence, and needless addictions against their own people. Their night on the town was not an innocent get together of friends to reminisce on the old times before he made his final commitment to his long time girlfriend. This particular night out was a continuation of his past nights out of fights, drug use, and talk of gunplay. You conveniently forget to mention the past convictions of gun possession, controlled substance sales and the fact that Trent Benefield couldn’t even stay out of trouble after this incident, beating his pregnant girlfriend bloody last year.
On the other hand, you choose to make villains out of three men who have sworn to protect the city and did so without incident or loss to life until that fateful night. You choose to ignore the fact that none of the cops involved in the shooting were white, including Detective Oliver who is of Lebanese decent, creating innuendo’s that because his appearance is white, he is in fact white and that racism was in play.
Sean Bell was not unarmed that night. He was armed and he used his weapon of choice, a 3200-lb Nissan Altima, to strike down a police officer and hit an unmarked police van twice. This criminal was not a stranger to the criminal justice system and I have no doubt in my mind that he knew they were cops that he was about to run over, just as we had a gut feeling that he was up to no good.
This was not a tragedy. You can sugarcoat this all you want, but Sean Bell’s lifestyle, his choices in life, and his choices that night sealed his fate. This is not a tragedy nor is this a unique story. If you choose to live a life of crime, most likely you will die a violent death. The only tragedy here is what three detectives had to go through for political reasons and yet another African American child is without a father due to his choices in life. This is the true tragedy.
As far as the prosecution is concerned, you can try and blame them all you want. The prosecution was poor because there was no case to begin with. You had three men politically indicted without regard of the Penal Law in which they clearly did not violate. You had witnesses on the stand that changed their story three, four, and five times. You had witnesses that told stories that contained physical impossibilities. You had witnesses that would do anything it takes to take a cop down with them. You had witnesses that had been paid off by Al Sharpton or given back door deals on pending cases by the DA’s office to “cooperate” and testify. You also had witnesses on the stand that got testy and showed their propensity for violent outbursts, even in protected environment such as a courtroom. No, the judge did not have a hard time reflecting on this case and coming down with a verdict. That’s because there was no case.
(part 2 in the next comment)
April 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
So if I can build a time machine and tell my brothers what will happen if they decide to take focus of their case and try to save a possible homicide from happening in front of their eyes, what would the headlines say the next day? I’ll tell you:
“Past criminal kills family of four in drunken accident after Cops ignore man going to his car in a drunken stupor, focusing on sting operation instead” or “Cops sitting inside club, doing sting operation, ignore talk of gunplay as violence erupts outside , three dead, one wounded….Where were the Police?”
Either way, in the eyes of the media, we cannot win. Maybe you should look in the mirror and you will see part of the recruitment and retention problem the NYPD has. Next time you are the victim of a crime, why don’t you call Guzman or Benefield for help, because according to you, they are the heroes and we are the villains.
If there happens to be violence, besides the ones perpetrating the violence, I will personally hold each and every one of you “reporters” civilly liable if anything happens to me or my relatives for fanning the flames of racial tension by failing to report the truth.
Police Officer,
New York City