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Posted on 04/19/2007 12:00:19 PM PDT by Dan Evans
Rap star Cam'ron says there's no situation -- including a serial killer living next door -- that would cause him to help police in any way, because to do so would hurt his music sales and violate his "code of ethics." Cam'ron, whose real name is Cameron Giles, talks to Anderson Cooper for a report on how the hip-hop culture's message to shun the police has undermined efforts to solve murders across the country. Cooper's report will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, April 22 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
"If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me?" Giles responds to a hypothetical question posed by Cooper. "I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him -- but I'd probably move," says Giles. "But I'm not going to call and be like, ÔThe serial killer's in 4E.' "
Giles' "code of ethics" also extends to crimes committed against him. After being shot and wounded by gunmen, Giles refused to cooperate with police. Why? "Because...it would definitely hurt my business, and the way I was raised, I just don't do that," says Giles. Pressed by Cooper, who says had he been the victim, he would want his attacker to be caught, Giles explains further: "But then again, you're not going to be on the stage tonight in the middle of, say, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with people with gold and platinum teeth and dreadlocks jumping up and down singing your songs, either," says Giles. "We're in two different lines of business."
"So for you, it's really about business?" Cooper asks.
"It's about business," Giles says, "but it's still also a code of ethics."
Rappers appear to be concerned about damaging what's known as their "street credibility," says Geoffrey Canada, an anti-violence advocate and educator from New York City's Harlem neighborhood. "It's one of those things that sells music and no one really quite understands why," says Canada. Their fans look up to artists if they come from the "meanest streets of the urban ghetto," he tells Cooper. For that reason, Canada says, they do not cooperate with the police.
Canada says in the poor New York City neighborhood he grew up in, only the criminals didn't talk to the police, but within today's hip-hop culture, that's changed. "It is now a cultural norm that is being preached in poor communities....It's like you can't be a black person if you have a set of values that say 'I will not watch a crime happen in my community without getting involved to stop it,'" Canada tells Cooper.
Young people from some of New York's toughest neighborhoods echo Canada's assessment, calling the message not to help police "the rules" and helping the police "a crime" in their neighborhoods. These "rules" are contributing to a much lower percentage of arrests in homicide cases -- a statistic known as the "clearance rate" -- in largely poor, minority neighborhoods throughout the country, according to Prof. David Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "I work in communities where the clearance rate for homicides has gone into the single digits," says Kennedy. The national rate for homicide clearance is 60 percent. "In these neighborhoods, we are on the verge of -- or maybe we have already lost -- the rule of law," he tells Cooper.
Says Canada, "It's like we're saying to the criminals, "You can have our community....Do anything you want and we will either deal with it ourselves or we'll simply ignore it.' "
You don’t have a code of ethics you piece of dung!
It’s all about the benjamins.
Put him on the “no respond” list when he calls 911.
Eye Guy’s Rules of Algebra:
Code-of-Ehtics and Thug-Rapper-with-Infantile-Apostrophe-In Name are mutually exclusive sets.
THAT's THE FREAKIN' PROBLEM, RIGHT THERE!......
Can you call that environment a sustainable ‘community’?
Coop may be a lib but this is a great interview. Now, to make it a really great piece, Coop needs to question the Justice Bros ( Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) about this.
Real dumb.....
Trendy T-Shirt often seen in urban courtroom galleries.
..... so would it be painting with too broad a brush to simply say.....
“Rappers are scum!”
OK, maybe we’re only allowed to say it about THIS guy, but I wonder how many others think the same way..... incredible to have “clearance rates” for homicides in the single digits because no one will tell police anything about murderers.....
Let’s hope it isn’t!
Mr. Giles is a moron. Taking a perfectly good name like Cameron and jacking it all up with an apostrophe . . . I hope his mama tanned his hide when she saw that.
And the RIAA thinks that music sales are down because of file sharing....
And if the murderer murdered his loved ones before he moved would he feel guilty for not taking action?
“After being shot and wounded by gunmen, Giles refused to cooperate with police”
This is good to know...
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