Controversy over "Stop Snitching" T-shirt doesn't fade

The teenagers all know what the "stop-snitching" T-shirts mean - even if their parents don't.

Waiting outside John F. Kennedy High School after class Thursday, 10th grader Victor Arellano said that even though he doesn't own one, his classmates are still wearing the shirts that were a hot summertime fad.

"That means stop telling on other people what goes on the streets - hustling," Arellano said.

Some adults, including 1st Ward Councilman Anthony Davis, have voiced concern about the fashion that they say promotes drug dealing and discourages people from cooperating with the police.

"It's not a positive thing to see them walking around with negative shirts with negative sayings on their backs," Davis said Thursday. "Gang members or people who are involved with negative activities came up with the idea."

The fad began last year in Baltimore, another city that has struggled with crime, drugs and poverty. An entrepreneur there made a DVD that depicted local drug dealers complaining about their former colleagues who, when arrested, informed the police about the criminal activities of others.

The movie, titled "Stop Snitching," became an underground hit and provoked a quick and heated response from politicians and police. T-shirts soon followed. Hip-hop artists began to wear them.

In response, the Baltimore Police Department made a shorter video that also featured a hip-hop soundtrack and images of gun-toting thugs - those who had been arrested. The department called the video "Keep Talking."

"Living a life of violence and guns/there's numerous ways you can choose to earn funds," a rapper says in the video.

Paterson police Lt. Anthony Traina said although the fashion arrived in North Jersey this year, he doesn't believe the shirts have had any effect on the police.

At Come Up Fashions, a downtown clothing store on Broadway, manager Tremaine Thomas said the stop-snitching fad has mostly passed. Still, his store sells three different designs with the same slogan. One shirt features a man holding a rat in one hand and a knife in the other. He said the shirts, and other gangster-themed clothes, only feed into a need for urban fashions that reflect the teens' own communities.

Despite the popularity of the stop-snitching design, Thomas and store owner David Lemus maintain it's only one of many they stock, including shirts that read "The family that prays together, stays together." Ultimately, Thomas said, the responsibility for making sure children get the right message is up to their parents.

"The parents have got to tell their kids what's good and what's bad," he said. "If you see someone getting mugged, that's not the time to not snitch."

Davis said he has found some teenagers who don't understand the message behind the shirts or similar ones that feature a picture of a snowman - slang for a cocaine dealer. He would like to see the school district take measures to remove the shirts from the classroom, as some districts elsewhere in the country have done.

Also outside Kennedy High School on Thursday, 16-year-old Javon Jackson said he has seen the shirts on his peers and hopes to get one himself. He knows what the shirts mean, but he interprets the slogan more loosely. For him, it simply means mind your own business. He concedes that despite the shirt's connection to the drug trade, most teenagers wear it simply for fashion.

"I don't do no drugs. All I think about is basketball. I try to stay out of trouble," Jackson said.

'Stop snitching' shirts

THERE are undoubtedly parents in Paterson who refuse to let their teenagers wear "stop snitching" T-shirts.

They know the shirt's message is about looking the other way where drugs and crime are involved. Even if the kids say it's all about fashion, these caring parents know the implicit threat in the message is "Mind your own business - or else."

That's just the attitude that helps to keep gangs and drug dealers in business.

But there are lots of other parents who don't know what the message means, or even if they do, will not stop their kids from wearing the shirts - including the shirt that has a thug holding a rat in one hand and a knife in the other.

That's too bad, but the schools and store owners can step in. The T-shirts should not be allowed in class in any Paterson school, and store owners should find other clothing to sell.

Kids can be hip and fashionable without doing public relations for criminals.

Snitching taboo not unique to the inner city

AT PATERSON'S John F. Kennedy High School and elsewhere, the "Stop Snitching" T-shirt, like any other fad, will blow over soon enough. The sentiment will not. It's part of peer loyalty. Even more, the code of silence is a bond that unites outsiders against the more powerful.

Trying to ban the T-shirt is a losing battle, especially when the wearers have patron saints like Lil' Kim to look up to. Choosing not to rat on a pal, the raunchy rapper was tried and sentenced to a year in federal prison. She'd rather fight than snitch.

Lil' Kim went to prison in September rather than betray a member of her posse. A surveillance tape proved she had lied about not knowing if her friend and bodyguard was involved in a shoot-out. She had refused to snitch on him.

Don't think of anti-snitching as a ghetto thing. "Omerta" is not exclusive to any group. Also called the blue wall of silence, it kept New York City police from ratting on one another about who sodomized Abner Louima with a stick. It shielded a Prospect Park police officer, who finally had to pay for sexual indiscretions while on duty. And Catholic bishops routinely drew a curtain of silence that allowed pedophile priests to sexually assault children in one church after the other.

The snitch or collaborator is never a hero in our culture. The turncoat, the quisling, the betrayer, the rat-fink, the stoolie. The shirt in question has different versions of the same message: "Don't Snitch," "Stop Snitchin'." At Lil' Kim's trial, "Real Men Don't Snitch" was seen on one shirt. It took a few months for the anti-snitch T-shirt, complete with an international traffic control symbol, to make its way to Paterson. It'll be gone soon enough. But it's not just about the T-shirts.

Beyond the obvious implied threat that makes this a problem, it's also an ad for the fact that minority communities don't trust the police. Too many have bad experiences equal to or worse than consequences on the street. In addition to the implied threat in "Don't Snitch or else" message on the T-shirt, there is also the subtext of bad relations between the community and law enforcement in the inner city.

The criminal justice system is not accepted as an instrument of fairness. False testimony from informants ratting people out is seen as one instrument making black and Hispanic defendants dominate the prison population disproportionately. Paterson's high school students may not know that 87 percent of the kids in juvenile lock-up look just like them, but they do know that many of their peers get sent to jail.

On her newly released CD, "The Naked Truth," Lil' Kim puffs out her chest, crowing proudly about her decision not to snitch. She uses her rap on a cut called "Spell Check" to condemn the two former members of her Junior M.A.F.I.A. posse who turned "state's evidence" on her. Their testimony helped convict the diminutive rapper.

"They took the stand, on the D.A.'s side," she says in her rap immortalizing her so-called friends as turncoats. The two members of her group won't be able to hold their heads up in a world where loyalty is held at high premium and snitching makes you a wuss. That code of silence is the very thing that keeps the nearly 10-year old murder of her former boyfriend, Biggie Smalls, unsolved. The same goes for the murders of two other rappers, Tupac and, more recently, Jam Master Jay.

Even hip-hop fans have not been very aggressive about pushing for answers. That would destroy the anti-snitch ethos that keeps outsiders banded together as a force against the more powerful. One of the unfortunate contradictions of barrio life is that even though people want to see crime and other gang activity cleaned up in minority communities, the price is high: To stop crime in the community you have to rat on your friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, parents.

I'm not endorsing drug dealing. Far from it. I encourage the kids to be smart about drugs and discourage their friends from getting involved as users or sellers. Better they should wear a T-shirt that says "Go to school, don't be a fool." If they're going to be a walking billboard, then it should be for a positive message or a neutral message. The cost of snitching is enormous, but so is the cost of not stopping street crime. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Send comments about this column to opedpage@gmail.com .

The story behind it all was to promote crime by confusing the victims of crime, mainly store owners, and the police when it came to "describe" what the perp. was wearing. A --- person wearing a white t-shirt. And when it came time to look for the suspect on the streets, it became more and more difficult since everyone was wearing the same style and plain white T-shirt.

I live in NYC and have never heard that.

That sounds like another conspiracy theory urban legend.

Do you have a source on that?

I find impossible to believe that a gang or some thugs would even dream of pulling of a stunt and being more successful then multi-billion dollar fashion companies so they could go shoplifting.

It would be more plausable if it was leather jackets or something, but white t-shirts?

Re the white t-shirt thing...it's been the standard summer fare in my 'hood for the past 5 years too. I always figured it was because when you get arrested the local jail will only let you keep a plain white t-shirt and those jump suits are itchy I've been told.

The friends I have (and me) do own white t-shirts.

But thats only because they're cheap, easy to clean and easy to replace.

If its a designer shirt or something, its not going to be something you want to get dirty.

I've worn solid black and solid white t-shirts since I was a kid, along with all the designer labels, it was never a fashion statement, just cheap, easy to replace, easy to clean and something you don't worry about.

I doubt any thug would have the brains to think they could start a fashion fad or follow one just to make get aways easier.

Sidenote: There was one thing some local thugs started doing years ago, they would wear different clothes under (tear away) jump suits, so they could run, pull off the tear aways and look totally different, but that died a quick death (ain't easy running with 2 layers of clothes).

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