Aug. 12, 2007
Stop Snitchin'
Rapper Cam'ron: Snitching Hurts His Business, "Code Of Ethics"
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Play CBS Video Video Stop Snitchin' In Full: CNN's Anderson Cooper reports on how the hip-hop culture's message not to cooperate with the police in any way has undermined efforts to solve murders across the country.
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Video Rapper Cam'ron On Snitching Rapper Cam'ron tells Anderson Cooper there's never a reason to help the police. He says he is so against the authorities, he wouldn't even turn in a serial killer.
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Video Cooper's Reporter's Notebook CNN's Anderson Cooper talks about the conflicting messages conveyed through hip-hop culture and how record companies are doing little to address these concerns.
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In most communities, a person who sees a murder and helps the police put the killer behind bars is called a witness. But in many inner-city neighborhoods in this country that person is called a "snitch."
"Stop snitchin'" is a catchy hip-hop slogan that embodies and encourages this attitude. You can find it on everything from rap music videos to clothing. "Stop snitchin'" once meant "don’t tell on others if you’re caught committing a crime."
But as CNN's Anderson Cooper reports for 60 Minutes, it has come to mean something much more dangerous: "don’t cooperate with the police – no matter who you are."
As a result, police say, witnesses are not coming forward. Murders are going unsolved.
Reluctance to talk to police has always been a problem in poor, predominantly African-American communities, but cops and criminologists say in recent years something has changed: fueled by hip-hop music, promoted by major corporations, what was once a backroom code of silence among criminals, is now being marketed like never before.
The message appears in hip-hop videos, on T-shirts, Web sites, album covers and street murals. Well-known rappers talk about it endlessly on DVDs. It is a simple message heard in African-American communities across the country: don't talk to the police.
"When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching…. It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters," says Geoffrey Canada, a nationally recognized educator and anti-violence advocate. "It was not for regular citizens. It is now a cultural norm that is being preached in poor communities."
Canada has been working with children in Harlem for more than 20 years. He grew up poor in a tough New York neighborhood, but says the message kids are getting today is very different and dangerous.
"People are walking around with shirts. People are going out making, making music. People are saying things that if you're a snitch it's like being an Uncle Tom was when I was growing up," Canada says. "It's like you can't be a black person if you have a set of values that say, 'I will not watch crime happen in my community without getting involved to stop it.'"
"So this slogan, this 'stop snitchin'.' It now extends to rape, robbery, murder, really any crime?" Cooper asks.
"Any crime," Canada says. "It's like we're saying to the criminals, 'You can have our community. Just have our community. Do anything you want, and we will either deal with it ourselves, or we'll simply ignore it.'"
Canada could no longer ignore it on Feb. 5, 2006, when Israel Ramirez, a student he had mentored and loved like a son, was shot to death outside a soundstage in Brooklyn.
Ramirez was working as a bodyguard for the rap star Busta Rhymes, who was making a music video.
A person who was there told 60 Minutes Ramirez was shot in front of Busta Rhymes. He died at the scene two days before his 29th birthday, leaving a wife and three children behind.
"You know, I just think of him, being shot, falling down, probably thinking, 'This might be it.' And I just wonder, who held his hand? Who caressed his head? Who told him, 'I'm gonna be here?' Who stayed with him? Who made sure this man just didn't die alone for nothing?" Canada wonders.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says there were at least 25 people who may have witnessed the shooting. But he says nobody has come forward to testify.
"The people that we've located, either were inside and didn't see anything. Or you'll get a version of, 'I have to work in this business. Ask Busta Rhymes what happened,'" Commissioner Kelly says.
The police would like to ask Busta Rhymes what happened but, even though he talked vaguely about the killing on a cable TV show, he refused to talk to investigators, or to 60 Minutes.
Geoffrey Canada believes it's because Busta Rhymes doesn’t want to jeopardize sales of his music and videos; Canada says being labeled a "snitch" might have damaged Rhymes' "street cred."
"One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility,'" Canada says.
Busta Rhymes did put a tribute to Israel Ramirez on the video he was making when Ramirez was killed. "Just wanted to make sure people seen this so they know you ain't die in vain. Love you and I miss you, Homie. Hope we make you proud," Rhymes said in the video.
"I think that's horrid," says Canada. "I ask you Busta, as a man, if that was your son and you watched someone kill your son, would you remain quiet or would you get justice for your son? This is murder. This is murder. This is watching someone getting murdered. How do we walk away from this?"
Produced By Andy Court and Keith Sharman
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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The report seems to conclude that Stop Snitchin is strictly about street image and business. That may be so what about trusting the police and mindless consumerism? The response was overwhelmingly %u201Cno%u201D in trusting the police. The opening scene of the Godfather shows this brilliantly. %u201CThere were courts of law and you didn%u2019t need a friend like me. But you don%u2019t ask for friendship, you don%u2019t ask for respect. But now you say Don Corleone bring me justice. What have I done to have you treat me so disrespectfully?%u201D
So is %u201CStop Snitchin%u2019%u201D really just about image and business or is it more about who can you trust and consumerism gone awry?
Tony Montana %u201CDo you know what capitalism is? Getting f#*&^ed.%u201D
"The World is Yours". But what kind of world you you want?
They would have to pay for that placement or sign a release for the usage. One would think that the Yankee organization would not support the anti-law enforcement message but they must be comfortable with this. Cam'ron must sell thousands of baseball caps for them.
Does this mean you go out & buy a gun & take the law into your own hands? That makes a lot of sense.
Another pearl of wisdom from bayyyboiii:
"Didn't your mom ever tell you, "DON'T BE A TATTLETALE"!! Well, that is exactly what snitchin is doing...TATTLETALING."
You know exactly what your mother was talking about. The stuff that brothers do to their sisters & vice versa. Somehow I don't think your mother was referring to murder & rape. Felonies.
They're nothing but a negative influence. You're surrounded by stupid, ignorant people.
Black people are doing it to themselves.
Re something else someone brought up. No American black is going to Africa to live.
The worst poverty in the USA is nothing
compared to the poverty in Africa.
ALL GANGS HAVE THE SAME CODE" posted by karimah2
I never knew the black community as a whole was considered a gang. I guess you missed the interviews with the young kids or did you consider them gang members as well? Were the 25 blacks who witnessed the murder where none will talk all gang members? Wake up! This is not a gang issue it is a black issue. It is also asinine to think that some rap singers are responsible for robbing so many blacks of their moral and ethical sense to the point where they would FREELY CHOOSE to let murderers go free so as not to harm their oh so precious image amongst their peers.
This story simply drives home the most important behavioral difference between blacks and whites and that is the overall difference in moral and ethical behavior and it is this lack of morals that is responsible for keeping blacks as outsiders in their own country.
ALL GANGS HAVE THE SAME CODE.The CosaNostra/Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood, Kkk, Ms-13) a large Latino gang, and Asian gangs.
By pointing the finger at the Black rappers, etc,
you are making all neighborhoods vulnerable.
As the one guy, said, the owners of these music companies are making millions, and to them that is all what counts. ALL YOUNGSTERS ARE LISTENING!!!!AND LEARING, AND WILL COPY CAT WHAT THEY SEE AND HEAR.
Police are not good, they are necessary.
Big business is not bad....in this case the end result would be identical if the recording companies made thousands instead of millions.
The AfrAm community feels that they have had no input or impact on the rules and laws of our society, and they don't accept them. They want to be different, and they are making up their own rules. This is no different from adolescent rebelling, except that it has grown into a coltural and racial entity that we will have to deal with in the decades to come.
There is no point in ridiculing it, pretending that they are wrong, and telling ourselves that this is incomprehensible.
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