Snitching, Revisited
A New Book and a New Incident Expose the Need for Change
2009-10-06
Eric Easter

Now that the shocking and eye-opening video moment that is the killing of Chicago youth Derrion Albert has run its course, the story has returned to its less-shocking and entirely predictable next episode  - the one where police try to get information from witnesses to close a case and come up with absolutely nothing.

Despite a video showing dozens of people in, around and near the melee, Chicago police have only been able to pull the most obvious perpetrators from the tape. Out of fear, mistrust, self-interest or a twisted sense of justice, no one will speak up about what they obviously know. That’s not anything new but given the circumstances of this particular case, it’s still appalling.

But street marketing is power, and the code of the streets that influenced the “Stop Snitching” campaign in jail houses, on street corners and in rap music has had a major impact on the ability of authorities to gather information, and the ability of communities to seek and get justice.

It seems everyone in that particular South Side neighborhood has taken that bit of code to heart, those who participated and those who only watched on the sidelines. But according to a new book on the subject by Alexandra Natapoff, a Loyola law professor who has been studying the subject for ten years, the neighbors and bystanders in have it all wrong. The “Stop Snitching” campaign that has become street code and cultural phenomenon was not intended for the innocent but for the guilty.

A key quote in the book from Robert Bethea, the producer of the infamous “Stop Snitching” video:

 “When we refer to snitches, we are referring to a person engaging in and profiting from illegal activities.” That definition excludes the other people on the block – old ladies, stoop sitters and others keeping a watchful eye on the hood.

The problem is, of course, that not everyone is aware of this bit of nuance. The ruthless thugs in Baltimore who burned a woman in her home along with her children some years ago, did not know that the blameless had an exemption clause. And so, once again, we get silence, because a Stop Snitching t-shirt or a hip hop tune is one thing, the violent death of witnesses with the guts to speak is something else.

The next segment in this episode is also predictable. The police will most likely offer one of those arrested the promise of a lighter sentence or some other form of leniency if he gives information. In Natapoff’s thinking, that is a huge mistake.

In “Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice” Natapoff emphasizes that “stop snitching” efforts were created to shutdown the practice of paying or rewarding other criminals to give information about (and against) other criminals.  Citing case after case of botched investigations, outright lies and wrongful imprisonment, she lays out a compelling case for ending, or at least dramatically amending the policies that allow police to compensate paid snitches for turning against their fellow bad guys. In her view – and who could disagree – the community is only as safe as that community’s trust in authority and the system of paid informants damages that trust.

Many police officers would disagree of course. In their minds, they are simply paying for the kind of information that in recent years especially almost never comes for free from people on the streets, the neighbors who close the blinds but see all, the guy on the corner who doesn’t want to make waves.  What those police fail to see is that the reluctance of the community to speak up and speak out is a result of the kind of neglect and lack of protection that led to the death of Derrion Albert and hundreds of young people like him.

The irony, she argues, is that by reducing sentences and ignoring the crimes of informants, law enforcement authorities display a lack of fairness and morality that works directly against the effort to build more trust from people who are innocent. It’s a “Why should I trust you to protect me if I can’t trust you to uphold the law?” vicious cycle that leaves everyone – including the police – more vulnerable.

In the meantime, if the effort to stop snitching is indeed only for those involved in crime, then who’s in charge of getting out the word that it’s okay for those who are without sin to stand up and tell the truth?
And who will tell the criminals to leave those people alone?

Unfortunately, whatever honor code the streets once held, any semblance of integrity among criminals has all but disappeared.
So the survival of the community is left, as always, to the people who inhabit it. And unless some major shift in policing occurs, those people will either take the law into their own hands, or like today, the code of the streets will rule.

Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice
NYU Press (2009)
$29.95
View Natapoff’s blog at http://www.snitching.org/