SILENCE ISN'T GOLDEN

The Stop Snitchin Campaign Is For Wussies -- Yeah, You Heard Me

I bet fans of the Stop Snitchin fad have never heard of Kitty Genovese.

Kitty, 28, a bar manager, was stabbed to death near her home in
Queens, N.Y., in 1964.

The murder took half an hour, during which 38 neighbours ignored her pleas.

One turned up his radio to drown out the screams.

Kitty became the poster girl of I Don't Want To Get Involved.

She must spin in her grave.

Check out your friendly neighbourhood stop sign.

Likely, some yob has spray painted it into a Stop Snitchin sign.
(There are no apostrophes in Gangsta Land).

You do not have to go far to find a Stop Snitchin T-shirt.

"My boyfriend wears one," says Jamie Ngo, 23, a U of T intern on our city desk.

"I hate it," she says. "It tells kids, 'Keep to yourself, don't do
what's right.'"

You can buy Stop Snitchin handbags and teddy bears, with accent
bullet holes. Clocks. Doggie blankets. Ball caps. There is even a
Stop Snitchin thong.

That mindset is fostered by hip hop artists like Cam'ron, aka Killer
Cam, of New York.

Six weeks ago he said he would move rather than snitch if a mass
murderer lived next door.

Refused To Help

Ol' Cam refused to help police when he was shot, right in the
Lamborghini, in 2005. Said it was against his "code of ethics."

Code of silence, you mean. Ethics, my ass.

Let us hope yesterday's pre-dawn police raids crippled the Driftwood
Crips gang.

Better still, maybe Project Kryptic has cracked the code. It is a
tough nut. How many times have we seen it? Young men gunned down in
dance clubs. Roomful of witnesses. No one sees a thing.

Fella shows up at emerg, bleeding from several bullet holes. No clue
how he got them.

"Easy for you to say, Mike," opines a colleague.

True, I live on one of Scarborough's leafier streets. Unlikely I will
ever need to rat on my neighbours.

Four blocks away, though, an "anti-violence" crusader named Sploogle
was gunned down in broad daylight in a playground.

All his neighbours spoke highly of Sploogle. Pure as snow. Friend to
all. Idol to kids.

Turned out Sploogle was a drug-peddling fraud who used his annual
"peace" picnic to drum up business. Indeed, "Sploogle" is slang for marijuana.

Everyone knew the real Sploogle. A baker's dozen "dime" bags of grass
were discovered on his riddled corpse.

Two dozen locals scattered when the shooting started in that
playground, which is bordered by scores of balconies.

No one saw a thing.

Even in death, the Stop Snitchin culture protected Sploogle's rep,
and his killers. Two years later, still no arrests.

The code drives the coppers crazy. It should worry us all.

'WHO Benefits?'

"Everyone has to ask themselves: Who benefits from silence?" says
Det. Larry Straver of Crime Stoppers.

"Only the bad guys benefit. A criminal operates beautifully in that
kind of environment.

"People need to realize, 'My kids are at risk because I'm not saying
anything and my neighbours aren't saying anything.' "

That finally may be sinking in.

Project Kryptic could only happen with neighbourhood help.

Straver reports calls to Crime Stoppers are actually up. Not that
shady characters have suddenly forsaken the code.

"It's the next level. The moms, the sisters and brothers are the ones
getting fed up.

"People are dying."

I bet the very real fear of your kid being gunned down outweighs the
fear, real or imagined, of pissing off a gangster.

Especially when you call Crime Stoppers and no one is the wiser.

Meanwhile, the man who made Stop Snitchin a phenonenon with his 2002
video is, surprise, surprise, in jail.

Baltimore rapper Rodney Thomas, aka Skinny Suge, was sentenced in
January to 15 years.

The crime? Bad lyric? No, he beat up a saleswoman in a menswear store.

I hope someone snitched on him.