board77

Many police departments and prosecutors are encountering people who witness and/or have information about a crime that refuse to cooperate. These usually involve homicides and felonious assaults. This is being caused by a movement in the Hip-Hop culture to "Stop the Snitching." They have written songs, made t-shirts, and posted fliers. Some have resorted to murder to stop people from doing the right thing and helping. It's hitting cities like Philadelphia and Newark, NJ very hard.

In Newark, they have found witness statements posted on light poles so people know who it cooperating. These are likely being given out by defense attorneys.

So my question is this, What can law enforcement and prosecutors do to overcome this? What is causing it?

Freddy

Part of what's causing it, I think, is what amounts to a something like a cultural secession movement among the gangsta/hip-hop/inner city/whatever you call it element where a critical mass of people have decided they simply aren't going to participate in society or recognize its institutions anymore. Part of the why is obvious--these people do get the short end of the stick and many of our major social institutions have become dysfunctional. But that isn't the whole story; many of these people are simply scum and have found a niche where they can act scummy and be respected rather than ostracized for it. What to do about it? Wish I knew. What's needed is a cultural change, and those are nearly impossible to effect deliberately due to the complexity involved and the law of unintended consequences. And in any case, they typically take longer than a generation to show results.

That's pretty crappy. Are there any laws that can be used to stop this? Or any laws to protect the witnesses?

Well, I can guess what the next episode of Law and Order will be about....


Lali

Feredir wrote:

In Newark, they have found witness statements posted on light poles so people know who it cooperating. These are likely being given out by defence attorneys.

That sounds criminally irresponsible of the defence attorneys. Shouldn't they be charged?

Open Records Laws allow him to have them for trial prep and the Constitution allows for the accused to confront and know the accuser. They would have to show that his intent was to cause harm.

With that being said, there is an investigation into whether or not he met with gang members and provided them with the statements and names of witnesses.

Intimidation of a Crime Witness is a Felony but if they are killing them, then who will testify?

freddy

Posting witnesses names on light poles = intimidating witnesses

Should be easy to prove

If you need help, feel free to hire me as a lawyer. I have no law experience, but I'd be happy to charge you tons of money.

Maybe this particular manifestation of the "no snitching" rule is more powerful, I have no way of knowing.

But if you think the hiphop guyz are bad, think of the Irish and "the troubles". And it's been going on a lot longer. No rat survives. The other day one of the Omagh bombers got off - no one has ever been convicted in that bombing and part of the reason is, no one, not one person, has ever ratted.

I have no clue what can be done about it.

At the risk of opening a huge can of worms by defending the indefensible, there is a difference. The IRA (or at least the "old" IRA) were fighting for the liberation of their country from a foreign occupying force. They simply did not recognise the British law as legitimate. They were resistance fighters, to use the French term from WW2. One mans witness is another mans informer, or snitch. After the liberation of France, Male collaborators were shot, and the women were stripped and their heads shaved. Again, I'm not defending it, but to compare Gangsters intimidating snitches to the IRA is ridiculous. Firstly, the IRA could have been summarily executed on discovery.

Of course, the line begins to blur when Freedom Fighters become Terrorists, and Gun Running becomes organised crime. One could argue that the men running the new IRA are no different to the Mafia, Gangstas or any other organised crime. But their source was different.

Jude,
You have to prove a direct threat. Simply placing a witness statement on a pole does not prove intimidation. If some wrote, "you snitch you die" or "someone needs to take care of this snitch" etc etc then you might have a case. Simply placing the paper up there without a direct threat won't suffice.

My original intent on this was to try to understand if anyone, particularly the younger ones floating around here, could tell me why they feel this way. Maybe I'm just too black and white (I'm working on it ) but I just see it as wrong to do this. What's the thought process behind the anger.

freddy

Seriously, I believe what thought process there is is nothing more complicated than "the system screwed us, so we're gonna screw the system". And the only thing worse than someone who's part of the system is a "traitor" who cooperates with it. This is the _real_ American culture war, IMO.

Wikipedia has a good article on this:

Stop Snitchin’

While I find the movement, and the attendant attitude, to be generally deplorable and nothing more than attempt by some to live completely outside the boundaries of acceptable society, I did make note of this part of the Wikipedia article:

Quote:

Some Stop Snitching activists say they are not opposed to concerned citizens going to the police with accurate information and don't consider them snitches. They say that snitches are people who give the government favorable testimony in exchange for a plea bargain, money, or some other kind of reward. They point out that these snitches tend to embellish the truth if necessary. According to a study by Northwestern University Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions snitches are responsible for 46% of wrongful capital convictions from false testimony.

In this case I think they have a point. It is one thing to provide information to the authorities if you are a witness to a crime. It is something else entirely to profit from such information, or to use it to exonerate yourself from your own wrongdoing, or even worse to fabricate information for such reasons. I don’t know how much that really happens, and I have no doubt that the people promoting this movement are motivated by selfishness instead of altruism, but I could see how this would provide fuel for the fire, so to speak.

Isn't exonerating yourself (at least partially) one of the ways to lure some snitches? How do you get than big mafia boss if his underlings remain tightlipped?

With gangs it's all about respect and intimidation. Perhaps gang members feel like they aren't getting enough respect and are getting a lot more grief so they are trying to throw their weight around by posting lists to "show" those "disrespectful" snitches what for.

The last way to get my respect is to attempt intimidation

OK, so let's say it is that they feel the way as TM and Dave say it is. Is this real or perceived? Is it something that is beat into their heads through hip-hop? Is there that many people who are truly being mistreated or is it a continued self-victimization?


freddy

double post, sorry.


freddy

It's happening here in Toronto, too. (Okay, I don't live in Toronto any more, but I was born there, and spent most of my life there.

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/ ... orontoHome

Quote:

Family lawyer Selwyn Pieters contends that David was killed because he testified against one of his accused killers in a swarming case two years ago.

"It is clearly the case that Mr. David Latchana met his death because he was considered a snitch for responding to a Crown's summons to testify in a previous case against the accused," Pieters said in a statement. "This has nothing to do with gang membership or the lack thereof."

Mary, I wonder how brave ANY of us would be in the face of this sort of intimidation, knowing we could be gunned down at any moment.

This one is especially sad: a mother who has lost two sons to gang violence, though she herself is an activist against violence:

Quote:

"It's beyond a nightmare," Wynter told the Sun yesterday from her home. "I feel like a motherless child."

Homicide detectives are continuing to investigate the afternoon shooting of Karim Rashid Ata-Ayi, 29, and are still appealing for any witnesses to come forward.

Wynter said she can't believe she's once again having to live with the awful feeling of knowing someone in her community knows who shot her son and isn't telling police. Worse, the person responsible for her son's death is still walking free.

"How can I end this grief?" she said. "I need justice to be done."

Link: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2007/ ... 3-sun.html

Very, very sad. But unless the cycle is broken, it's just going to keep on happening. The gang culture is totally dysfunctional, and only perpetuates the violence. It is so firmly ingrained in some areas of the city, that when police staged a surprise raid on a known gang community, where drug dealing was a way of life, one of the women shouted at them as they were taking gang members off to jail: "You're taking away our livelihood!"

Beating the system is seen as the only way to get ahead. The young kids see grinding poverty around them, then they see the drug dealers driving fancy cars, and dressed up with tons of bling-bling, and they think, "Hey, that's what I want, too."

Sunsilver wrote:

Mary, I wonder how brave ANY of us would be in the face of this sort of intimidation, knowing we could be gunned down at any moment.

Oh, I'd spill everything I knew. Fuck helping a criminal. There was a guy in my town who kept harassing the female employees of a convenience store, just being creepy and touchy, but one day grabbed a girl and threatened to slice her open, cum on her dead body, etc. My friend, the manager, who had dealt with him also but at least he didn't let out the full crazy on her, told me if the cops found him and it went to court, she'd have nothing to do with it. I was so disappointed in her and realized right then that to me it is very important to come forward with such information cuz you never know who it could save in the future. Vile threats one day can be a rape/murder the next. I know a solo monster is different from organized crime, but in the unlikely case that I actually knew something about a crime, no way would I hide that. Not the sort of burden I want weighing on me. Most importantly, if someone hurt me or my family and people were holding out about it I can't say I'd be appreciative, so it would be pretty silly to purposely do that to someone else. There are a lot of ways you can indirectly hurt a person, but that kind of inaction is stretching it, even for me.




*E*

Personally I'm starting to feel that I would far rather go to someone like Vito Corleone for justice or protection than to the cops.

Meril36 wrote:

Personally I'm starting to feel that I would far rather go to someone like Vito Corleone for justice or protection than to the cops.

Really? And why would that be? Watching a lot of Godfather movies lately?

I wonder why it is that some people (and you may be one of them) has this romantic idea about gangsters and codes of honour and swift retribution and that sorta thing.

Ever known a real criminal? Ever known a guy who would really, you know, kill someone? Ever known a guy who would, for instance, slash the throat of a snitch and pull her tongue down and out of the slash? Ever known a guy who threw gasoline over a horse and set it on fire?

Just curious.

meril, this has nothing to do with police so don't make it that way. If you want personal protection hire a body guard. The Constitution limits our power (rightfully so) but people want to whine because they aren't "being protected." If we are "everywhere" people complain, if no one sees a cop, they complain. In our city of 58,000 the average police officers working is 6.6/hour. Give me a break.

I have dealt with plenty of criminals and each one would slit the others throat, without a deal being offered. They simply want to appear to be cooperating so the judge will take it easier on them.


freddy