Right or wrong, the code of the street in poor, largely black neighborhoods in the Bay Area is never, ever cooperate with police. Posted on 01/28/2006 9:51:09 AM PST by SmithL
Right or wrong, the code of the street in poor, largely black neighborhoods in the Bay Area is never, ever cooperate with police.
To do so, the idea goes, means risking retaliation from criminals. The ethos cuts across generations, even as some who embrace it complain police do little about crime in their neighborhoods.
The mind-set is moving from the streets to the mainstream, carried by rappers denouncing rats and T-shirts declaring, "Stop Snitchin."
The T-shirts have proven popular in Oakland and elsewhere, prompting a debate within the communities where they're worn and frustrating police who say they're another hurdle to effectively policing the neighborhoods that need it most.
"The young men wearing the shirts are putting out fear," said the Rev. Curtis Robinson, senior pastor of Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland. "If you see somebody wearing a shirt, you know they are affiliated with a group of people who are not committed to building up the neighborhood, but instead are trying to tear it down."
Such arguments don't carry much weight with some residents who argue the T-shirts -- bearing slogans such as "Ditches are for Snitches" and "Snitches Get Stitches" -- merely reflect the commonsense notion that it's best to mind your own business.
" 'Stop snitchin' ' is a good motto because if you don't meddle in something that ain't your business, you'll live longer," 29-year-old Eric Davis said while shopping at Durant Square shopping center in Oakland, where several merchants sell the shirts. "That's why snitches die, sticking their nose in business that ain't theirs."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I don't know about anyone else here, but I have never been overly persuaded, or disuaded by "T" shirt messages.
This nonsense will continue until a few of these dudes
get shot while wearing these, which is inevitible given
that the shirt's message is:
Just Shoot Me
No One Will Snitch
Or Even Investigate
Ah, a bright future for those young men. But if you're black and do well in school, you're "acting white."
I live just south of San Francisco and have started seeing those t-shirts everywhere.
The problem is not the t-shirt per se, but the ever growing numbers of people wearing them.
They will end up moving to the suburbs as middle and upper middle class adolescent gangsta wannabees with too much pocket money try to look "bad".
If I were the cops there, I'd put up billboards and air radio spots on hip hop stations advertuising a toll-free, totally clean number to give tips and 'stooge' on crime slime. Give each caller a crime tip number and a personal code number. If the tips pay off in arrests and crimes being solved, advertise the crime tip number that hit the jackpot and the person can call in with the correct personal code and win the jackpot. Run it like the lottery and advertise it like the crimebuster TV shows. Finance it with seized drug money.
Yep. I understand that. I look at it as stupid. But consider that the parents set the example, out cruising on their Harleys wearing all the leather and imitation Nazi helmets trying to look like bike gang members. (Nothing against motorcycles, though harleys seems exempt from any noise ordinance)
I do not think most folks really know what gangs of any sort are into. Motorcycle gangs do some pretty nasty things; why would anyone want to even remotely resemble them?
That's it then. If they do not want to participate and live in a civilized society...
Put up a big-a$$ wall around THEIR "enclaves"! You want to allow the animals to run you and your lives...fine. You stay there then, and don't come into MY community, where we ALL live under the same rules and laws...and we help our neighbor!
Time to wall off all these liberal enclaves, and shoot to kill anyone who tries to get out without investigation and inspection!
America is dead, and it was killed by Multi-Culturalism and "tolerance"!
'Cause they get loose and easy chicks?
That'd be my guess...
AND by the notion that we shouldn't hold people responsible but should "understand" that it is class, economic, and social unjustice that leads these poor misguided folks to harm themselves.
I think Oprah, Tom Sowell, and Walter Williams and a few others should have a public forum on how hard it is for ghetto folk to better their situation.
Since they're so against "snitching",I hope that they'll understand how the police might reach the conclusion that it's an uphill battle to try to enforce law and order in their neighborhoods,as no one wants to give the police vital information that would help them to arrest the criminals stealing,raping,murdering,etc. I know people can't be so illogical as to think that the police can just go in there and use their crystal ball to ferret out lawbreakers.
OTOH,what am I thinking,the DU types would think just that.And even when they find the criminals,they shouldn't be so harsh as to actually arrest them or anything.No,the police should just go to some "power spot"(I believe that's the term) and envision the neighborhood in a veil of purple,because that'll make everyone enlightened so they won't want to hurt their neighbors.
Another reminder of why I can still die happy and never go anywhere near SF,or most of California.
Let us all, in the spirit of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, judge these young people "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Go back and look at the video of Selma. See the proud, clean, well-dressed people who marched with Dr. King. Where are they today? Where is the culture of achievement and non-violence?
Today's black culture owes more to Malcolm X
http://who2.com/jeeves/malcolmx.html
and Huey Newton
http://who2.com/hueynewton.html
than to the proud and peaceful doctrines of Dr. King.
Speak for yourself...I have Kept on Truckin' for the last 30 years...
Suggested T-Shirt for off duty police: "Just go ahead and shoot each other - morons."
At the Univ. of San Francisco Saturday night one of the Dons' redshirt players was wearing a stop snitchin t-shirt on the bench.
Which is ironic when you consider that the recent North Beach shooting death of CCSF star and USF recruit is still unsolved.
So much for the idea that a "Catholic" school would actually take a moral stand on something...
The player wearing the shirt was Antonio Kellogg who, by the way, was kicked out off the UConn basketball team last year for a relatively minor offense.
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