By Mark David Blum, Esq.

Much noise is being made about 60 minutes last Sunday and an episode which aired how persons in the Black community will not snitch. Even if a murderer was living next door said one guest, they would not snitch to police. As shocked as Anderson Cooper may have been, he has nobody but himself to blame for this growing and dangerous phenomena.

When there is a criminal nearby, the risk of being victimized belongs to me. If I snitch, based on thirty generations of life experience with police, the harm will be greater. Not only will I be targeted by police and the bad guys, but the perception that police will attack innocents in my community is so great that I prefer to risk the threat to one rather than expose hundreds.

This is the same reason kids join gangs and get into drug dealing. With all normal doors to life success being closed in their face and having spent a lifetime of being abused by police (eg DWB), most young Black males don’t see themselves even living to 30. They seen themselves as eventually being killed or going to prison.

Most if not all this problem stems from our attitude toward these communities. We have spent generations watching police misbehave and then used the power of our government to cover up and hide the real crimes. What we forget is that whenever police disabuse someone, not only is that individual’s attitude toward police forever changed, but so too are the attitudes of his friends, his neighbors, his children, and his family. One jackass police officer over the course of a career can turn an entire neighborhood against the police and give residents the feeling they are safer with criminals in their midst than with roving gangs of armed police operating with absolute immunity.

For a litany of obvious reasons, the poor and hopeless find their way into the business of drug distribution. Police keep arresting them and prosecutors and judges keep imprisoning them. Demand, however, is fueling a substantial market vacuum.” Everybody makes choices. Some folks argue that these are bad people who made bad choices and would continue to do so no matter if drugs were legal or not. Others argue that the lack of choices is a cop-out and that there is so much for kids otherwise to do that joining a gang and getting into violence is just an excuse. One wise idiot claimed to me once that, “no one makes these guys chose crime, and no one makes them choose violence. The majority of these guys are violent criminals, and cities across America are losing the battle to them or others like them.”

Correct they are. We all ‘choose’ the actions we take. Options are presented and based on our life experience, education, goals, and character, we ‘choose’ whichever among those options best suits our needs. Yes, there are libraries. Indeed there are community centers. Programs with things to do are all over the place. Ignorance perceives that all someone has to do is “choose” not to join a gang and they will live happily ever after.

How can I argue with that logic? Coming from the poorest of roots, I too grew up in a world of divorce, latchkey, and the streets. There were no ‘role models’ in my world. Life on the streets of Hollywood and Venice Beach was no place for a kid to grow up. Eventually, I too opted to drop out of high school and but-for serendipity, I managed to make some right decisions along the way. I have also become an expert on failure. My stupidity in Federal Court eight years ago is one of my more spectacular failures; but alas, it was not the only one. Few know better than I how possible it is to climb out of the gutter and avoid a life of gangs and crime.

Folks who grow up in privilege tend to become so isolated, they are unable to see the situation through the eyes of others. Stereotypes and commonalities become the expectation. Solutions are thrown around quick and cheap. “Failure” is an individual character flaw. Many people, including myself, simply cannot understand how a good kid with a good character can suddenly find themselves facing a life sentence in a Federal prison.

Perhaps, that is the best place to start. Take a good kid; one with high grades, a bright future, honor and character, and one with lofty goals and empathy for his community. For the sake of discussion, let’s call him Little Georgie.

Little Georgie, through no fault of his own, is born in poverty. His parents love him but can barely provide him with a bed under a leaky roof on the Southside of Syracuse and a daily bowl of cereal. Say what you will about his parents, they are not the discussion. The focus is on the untouched and innocent soul of Little Georgie. From him, who knows … perhaps the next Einstein or Van Gogh.

Taxpayers have been very generous and do provide a few pennies to help pay the rent for his apartment in one of the most crime ridden neighborhoods in the State. We know that despite the taxpayers and their love for children, Little Georgie is going to a school district with no leadership and maybe a 50% overall graduation rate. The pass rate for people of Little Georgie’s ethnicity is far lower. When he shows up, Little Georgie has to walk through metal detectors, sit in overcrowded and decaying classrooms, listen to the drone of a burned out teacher, and not read or do any homework from textbooks he does not have. Libraries have been censored and scaled back. Computers, calculators, and other ‘exotic’ school supplies are not budgeted. Drug testing, police dogs, armed officers, and security cameras are everywhere.

When the school day ends, Little Georgie will want to go out to play. Clubs, sports, music, drama, and extra curricular programs in the schools have evaporated. Little Georgie wants to play. Punishment for bad behavior in school causes a greater deprivation of the few after-school activities that are available. Of course, there is the library but we all know how every 13 year old boy spends his days and nights fantasizing about sitting quietly in the library.

Not everything kids do is academically oriented. How many of us spent our free moments of childhood immersed in libraries? How did you spend your time? Hanging out at the malt shop? Going to the drive in? Malling? Staring at the television? Cruising?

Little Georgie can do none of those things. Carousel, Shoppingtown, Great Northern Malls all have curfews in place. Kids cannot come in before certain hours on school days. They cannot be there after certain hours on weekends. If they hang with their friends, mall security considers it congregating and loitering. If people of Little Georgie’s ethnicity try and shop, they are followed and treated like thieves. Typical of preceding generations, adults look at Little Georgie and his clothes and his hair and his music and see a bum and a loser.

Most pathetic of all is that Little Georgie cannot even hang out with his friends. They are all poor like him; albeit good and honorable children. Because their parents are on public assistance and have limited income, Little Georgie gets to live in places like Kennedy Square, Cherry Hill or other housing projects in Syracuse. Each housing project, as everybody knows, is but one concrete block stacked upon another. Space is limited and there is nowhere to be ‘alone’ or with friends. Unlike folks in Manlius or Cicero, these kids cannot hang out in the backyards. They don’t have backyards. So, everybody hangs out outside the apartment building. It is no different on the Southside where instead of concrete towers to symbolize our cheapness, human beings are jammed into aging houses where nothing works and too many people are living in a single unit. Kids need space from their parents. They need where to be with their friends. They cannot talk in libraries.

We will not allow them to hang out outside. If a bunch of Little Georgies gather somewhere outside … anywhere outside, they will be considered to be loitering. People will drive by and see them standing there, perhaps in front of Diamonds Market, and wonder what kind of criminal activity is afoot. Demands are made of the police and City Hall to rid the streets of these gatherings of Little Georgies. Local ordinances are passed and are executed with blinding precision targeting all the Little Georgies.

Police are prowling as well and Little Georgie is not safe. Even if totally innocent, should Little Georgie be outside talking with his friends, police are going to approach and tell them to move on. Doing nothing and violating no law, this creates a confrontation and dislike for police. Where ever Little Georgie goes, police will not allow him and his friends to congregate. Whenever police do approach, they do so with hostility, threatening in nature, and pat/search everybody around.

Little Georgie is also not blind or deaf to what goes on around him. He sees and hears of excessive uses of force by police against people in the neighborhood. Time and time again he hears of how the “system” is against him. Everybody he knows has a record or knows someone who has a criminal record. Little Georgie knows so many people who have lost a family member to prison or death. Little Georgie is raised to have very little trust in police and learns to not feel safe when they are around.

Driving around likewise is something Little Georgie cannot do. Assuming he is old enough to have a license, and be able to afford the car, the insurance, the registration, the gasoline, the maintenance and repairs … Little Georgie is at a statistically higher risk of being stopped by police. He cannot own a car that is not “appropriate” for his ethnicity, age bracket, or income level. No more cruising down Erie Boulevard in sup’d up Chevys. That could get you five years in State prison.

So tell me about Little Georgie’s choices? To whom should go his loyalties?

Of course, Little Georgie is going to ‘join in with a gang’. It is not a choice. How do you expect him to be safe in school and while walking home? Police and the system, in his mind, already treat him like a criminal. He knows he is seen by society as a criminal. Normal avenues of escape are not available to him because his schools are crap. When is the last time you spent 15 minutes with someone like Little Georgie and showed him there were options. All of Little Georgie’s role models are dead, dying, or lifeless. Society ignores him and while pretending to have programs available, really does not reach out and touch people like Little Georgie. The center of his world, school, is stripped to the wall and Little Georgie has access to nothing beyond the bare basics.

When he is little, he will join up and hang with the gangters because Little Georgie does not know any better. With them and in their gathering, Little Georgie going to have a sense of belonging and will be able to be in the Mall or the street or at the movies, and feel safe. Of course he will also be taken in by the flash and sensational sums of the cash and clout. In time, Little Georgie is going to see people he becomes close to die, go to prison, or worse. He is going to develop an anger inside of him that will have society as a target. Police and the system are going to be harder on him. Nobody is going to listen when he pleads for help.

So what choices will Little Georgie have?

Forget Little Georgie … let’s take a situation from real life.

One year, at the New York State Fair, late one night, I received a telephone call from a client. This client is classic Little Georgie … an honest good hearted soul who engages in age appropriate misbehavior and has grown up in a world of gangs, violence, and death. But I got to know this person beyond all the labels and have worked hard to help him find a way out.

That aside …

So, this client called me and told me about a problem to which I had no solution. Having grown up as he did, this client had as a young boy joined up with what some folks call a ‘gang’. We do not remain 10 years old forever, and eventually the client came to the position in life that he wanted nothing more to do with it. He had been working hard with me and others to find a way into a normal life and has been relatively successful – despite the best efforts of the Syracuse Police Department.

Two problems emerge now. The gang wanted the client to come with them that night to engage in something stupid. I got the telephone call that judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police, and probation officers never get … I got the telephone call BEFORE something happened. The client needed a way out.

The rules of the streets with gangs are simple: ‘Blood in, blood out’. To be a member, you have to draw blood or pay with your own. To get out of a gang, assuming you can, the price is the same. Not wanting to kill anyone or be killed himself, the client had been fronting for years pretending to be still a part of the group.

So here I was with the telephone call. First thing I did was help him find a place to hide so nobody could reach him by telephone or guess his location. It worked. He spent the night safe and in a warm bed instead of on the run, dead, or in the county lockup.

But the question never goes away. How do you rescue a kid from a gang? Unless you are going to build a gigantic wall around Montana and guard it with the best soldiers and send all the “punks” to live there, sooner or later, someone in a gang is going to have to put up or die. If they run away or cooperate with police, they are hunted for life. There is no way out without a loss of life.

I have asked everybody I know. ‘What is out there to help a kid escape a gang?’ Not a single person I know or met has a real solution. They preach “don’t join”. Yeah, all well and good but life does not always grant children the foresight to make all the right decisions. Stupid mistakes made as children should not condemn them to a life of pain and prison. As these children age, the protective ‘club’ nature of the gang changes. Demands for money increase the level of participation. Power, prestige, and sex all come from the business of the gang and what kid would not want to enjoy all those trappings?

So, tell me what choices Little Georgie really has? Are you going to give him a job with his Syracuse drop out record? What about his criminal record? What college is going to take him when he has no athletic, music, or drama skills? Who will pay? When Little Georgie was feeling unsafe on the streets, police left him no choice but to fear them. Where was Big George when Little Georgie had nowhere to turn but to the ‘hood’ the moment he set foot outside his home?

What are Little Georgie’s real choices?

What happens when good Little Georgie ends up in prison for his friendship and association with the older gangbangers who are doing the real dangerous stuff? Our local U.S. Attorney and his application of the RICO laws spares nobody. Now, with Little Georgie in prison, what choices will he have then?

My message to those who refuse to see what is going on around them and wonder why folks refuse to cooperate with police … it is time to get your head out of the sand and take a look around you. All the gang and drug problems, the violence, the money, the poverty … comes from your policies … not mine. Generation after generation is dying and disappearing.

I argue that the BUSINESS of drugs, because it is illegal and so lucrative, is the perfect avenue out for people otherwise trapped. The unhappiest person in America the day the Government repealed alcohol prohibition was Al Capone. Ending prohibition now will not cure gangs or stop violence. It will significantly narrow THEIR CHOICES as to what activities they can engage in to raise funds. Drugs are just too damn dangerous to leave unregulated and controlled by organized crime.

Police need to learn to approach kids or people without the desire or presumption that the citizen has drugs on their person. Police should not care about that. Their focus should be on the safety of the community. It would go a long way toward healing our community if police approached kids on a street corner and instead of cavity searching them, spent some time just hanging out.

Right now, whenever police approach, kids feel they have no choice BUT to run. That is when someone gets hurt. Do you really think the lure of easy money, power, sex, and glory that come with being a gangstah can overcome the innocence of youth? At 15, do you really realize the long term effects of what you are doing?

Choices, despite being there, can be clouded or limited by circumstance. Nobody chooses to live a life of pain and prison. There are situations, however, where the only choice is prison or death. Ours is not a society creating options. Instead, the laws get tougher, the sentences get longer, DDTs and CRTs swarm the streets, and one generation after another is branded, killed, and locked up for life.

The first step to end the Stop Snitching rule is to prove to the community that police and the system are not the enemy. This is the cycle I seek to stop. To those who want to say, “suck it up” as if it is a magic incantation. I would respond by saying, you should “suck it up” and get off your fat ass, and do something to save just one person’s life.

Otherwise, we lose and the criminals win.