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Snitching: Some say movement discouraging cooperation with police is more about fashion than justice
By Scott Anderson
RACINE - As family members mourned the loss of Bennie D. Smith after he was fatally shot on May 7, the family submitted two photographs of him to The Journal Times for publication.
Both photographs showed Smith standing outdoors following his May 2005 release from prison after serving six years of a nine-year sentence.
But these two photographs had something else in common.
Smith was pictured wearing a black T-shirt bearing a large stop sign on its front, which delivered the following message: Stop Snitching.
The Stop Snitching message that appeared on Smith's shirt seems to oppose the family's efforts as they cooperate with police to solve his murder, but Monique Taylor, Smith's 25-year-old sister, said the shirt was just a fashion statement.
But it's a fashion statement that's catching on.
Nikki Valdez, a 22-year-old political science major at Marquette University who grew up in a poor area in Phoenix, said she's seen firsthand why people support the movement, but went on to say that many people simply buy the shirts to be trendy.
"I'm not a big fan of the Stop Snitching movement because it's a fashion statement for most people," she said. "It just seems commercialized. It's being escalated by rap music."
A popular DVD The Stop Snitching movement started as a warning to informants about the consequences of cooperating with police and gained popularity across the country after a Baltimore-based rapper published a homemade DVD titled "Stop Snitching" in 2004.
As the DVD circluated across the U.S., the Stop Snitching message evolved from a simple warning to informants into a general call for anyone to avoid cooperating with the police.
It's an idea that has generated controversy on both sides of the law in urban centers like Baltimore, New York, Chicago and Milwaukee, but Dean Stanton, the Racine Police Department deputy chief of investigators, said he hasn't seen it take root here.
"I don't believe the Stop Snitching campaign is popular or widespread in our area. I haven't seen an organized campaign here," he said. "But when I was hired here 31 years ago, there were always people that tell other people not to talk to the police."
Failing to cooperate with the police is an idea as old as policing itself, but regardless of the circumstance, local officials say noncooperation will always end up hurting the community.
"It's unfortunate that people see it as snitching instead of helping the community," said Connie Cobb-White, Victim Witness Assistance Program coordinator. "I don't want people to feel that they are snitching because they are cooperating with law
enforcement."
Cobb-White, a former police officer, provides a support base in the form of counseling, financial assistance and limited protection to many victims and witnesses through her office, but a recent experience with a group of crime witnesses gave her a glimpse into the realities people face when they consider coming forward with information.
"I spoke with a group of men a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised because they were not willing to talk for fear of being protected," she said. "They said `What can you do to protect me? What's going to happen to me when I come forward?' " But in a community with several unsolved homicides from 2005, a citywide reluctance of witnesses to divulge information remains a persistent problem for local law enforcement.
"If we don't have eyewitnesses to present to the District Attorney, the case goes unsolved," said Sgt. Steve Madsen, the Racine Police Department public information officer, "and we can't testify to things that we overhear."
Police collect physical evidence, review videotapes and study forensic evidence to reconstruct a crime scene, but at times have difficulty getting witnesses to overcome peer pressure.
"A lot of times we tell people that cooperating is the right thing to do, and we appeal to their sense of family," Madsen said. "We tell people, `This is not going to end until you decide to act. The sooner, the better.' " Alexandra Natapoff, an associate professor at the Loyola Law School at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said that in order to understand snitching, people have to understand its place in recent U.S. history.
"The people who made the T-shirts didn't invent snitching; rap artists didn't invent snitching," she said. "It's been a very powerful government public policy over the last 20 years."
That policy meant employing a snitch, also known as an informant, in order to aid in its investigations in the war on drugs.
Natapoff said the government's policy of striking deals with criminals in order to catch other criminals has had a devastating effect on impoverished and high-crime areas.
"Snitching may actually increase crime by setting criminals free and by underenforcing drug laws," she said. "That can be a very dangerous thing for a community."
Natapoff, a former federal public defender based in Baltimore, said she has seen the effect of snitching over the years, and explained how snitching can erode trust.
"There's a double standard that exists," she said. "Police may not always protect you if there are competing snitch interests."
Ebony Utley, an instructor at Marquette, went even further, saying the roots of the current Stop Snitching movement have been around since the late 1960s.
"Stop Snitching comes to hip hop on that fuzzy line between hip hop culture, street culture and prison culture," she said. "Hip hop culture is helping to popularize something that's been present since the Black Panther era."
An FBI informant helped coordinate the fatal shooting of Black Panther deputy leader Fred Hampton in 1971. Hampton was killed by an FBI-organized unit of the Chicago Police Department.
Utley said the black community initially underestimated the power of police informants, but the war on drugs brought the use of police informants to the forefront.
"Part of the reason Stop Snitching is more popular than ever is because there have been more snitches than ever," she said. "Usually they snitch on people who are not as guilty. They just drop names in order to look out for themselves."
But as snitches drop names, Utley said, police cause fear and resentment for law-abiding citizens.
"A majority of people are law-abiding citizens who want crime out of their community," she said. "When the police come in, they're all viewed as criminals."
Utley explained. "Let's say police get a tip and set up shop in your neighborhood. They start harassing people, saying, `Where are you going, who are you with?' The criminals never seem to get caught," she said. "People feel cooperating with police is not going to help. People start thinking, `We're not going to risk our lives to continue to be oppressed and repressed.'"
But if the policy of cultivating informants foments a sense of mistrust in the very people it was originally designed to protect, local officials are employing community policing tactics in order to reinforce a positive relationship in the community.
Community policing is seen as an inclusive philosophy that puts more police officers on the street rather than in cars and promotes a cooperative neighborhood police presence.
At the heart of Racine's Community Policing effort is the presence of four COP houses.
"COP houses are the key to building relationships," Madsen said. "They develop a good talking relationship with people. People who walk down the street are more willing to participate in a free flow of information."
But as police investigate a string of shootings on Racine's south side, that free flow of information - whether it's there - remains vital to solving a pattern of recent violence that vexes the entire community.
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