TRUST LOST IN POLICE, SO SNITCHING BECOMES TABOO IN RAP CULTURE

Too bad Cam'ron couldn't have started with the apology instead of the
sensationalism.

A few weeks ago, the rapper told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an
interview for 60 Minutes that he would never cooperate with the
police on catching a criminal.

He didn't do it two years ago when he was shot in both arms in front
of his entourage. He told Cooper he wouldn't talk to the police even
if his next-door neighbor was a serial killer. Said he'd just move.

For Cam'ron, to tell would be to snitch, and in the netherworld ruled
by gangsta rap, snitching is sure to take a bite out of the street
cred that sells CDs.

But Cam'ron's remarks offended people who don't inhabit his universe.
He wound up apologizing. And as it turned out, his apology was more
useful than his earlier mouthing off, because it revealed that there
was a lot more to the "stop snitching" phenomena than aimless
rebellion and skewed priorities.

"Although I was a crime victim, I didn't feel like I could cooperate
with the police investigation," Cam'ron responded.

"Where I come from, once word gets out that you've cooperated with
the police that only makes you a bigger target of criminal violence.
That is a dark reality in so many neighborhoods like mine across
America. I'm not saying it's right, but it's reality. And it's not
unfounded....

"But my experience, in no way, justifies what I said. ... I apologize
deeply for this error in judgment."

The dark reality that Cam'ron spoke of is what spawned the anti-
snitching craziness.

It's a problem that continues to frustrate law enforcement officials
in high-crime cities such as Baltimore, and even here in
Jacksonville, where the murder rate continues on its bloody march up
the crime stat sheets.

Someone gets shot. Some people see it.

No one talks.

Many young people have been so isolated for so long that they see the
drug dealers and other criminals not as outlaws, but as embodiments
of power in a society that makes it tough for them to assert
themselves through legitimate means. They also see law enforcement as
part of that system; as oppressors, not liberators.

So they aren't going to talk.

Then there are the decent people trapped in those communities who
also won't talk. They fear that the police won't protect them once
the criminals they've identified or testified against manage to get
out of jail or beat the charges.

These people fear that criminals might come after them if the system
fails to protect them.

Just as Cam'ron described.

Of course, this "stop snitching" phenomena - now on T-shirts and spun
out on rap CDs - has been in the making for some time.

Nowadays, refusing to snitch isn't about someone declining to testify
against another person out of conscience, but out of fear or
defiance. Yet, Cam'ron's apology lays out the tools for turning the
anti- snitching situation around.

It won't be easy.

The people who are living in fear must, at some point, realize that
living in fear is like dying a slow death. They must also get their
neighbors to realize the same thing.

They then have to muster the courage to educate youths who can't see
their own destruction in their embrace of this trend. They have to
remind them that rappers like Cam'ron, who said he would move away
from a serial killer rather than call the police, have that option
because they've grown rich from the CDs they sell encouraging kids
like them to tolerate the gunfire and mayhem that comes when
miscreants run the neighborhood.

Most of all, cities must realize that the anti-snitching trend is the
result of what happens when people lose trust in the police to
protect them, and, on top of that, lose faith in their chances of
ever having a job or sense of power outside what street culture offers.

So now, we have a sick reversal: The credo gangsters once used to
shield themselves from the police is now the code that scared people
in crime-ridden communities use to protect themselves from criminals.

Or worse, ingratiate themselves to them.