Gregory Kane: 'Stop snitches' campaign could be fatal for enablers
By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
October 19, 2009
America's "Stop Snitching" crusaders -- and their plethora of clueless enablers -- can chalk up another victim: 15-year-old Michael Brewer.
Last Monday, five juveniles doused Brewer with rubbing alcohol in Deerfield Beach, Fla., and set the youth ablaze. At least one of Brewer's attackers yelled, "He's a snitch! He's a snitch!" shortly before Brewer was torched, according to news reports.
What precipitated this horrific and pathetic incident was a $40 debt: Brewer borrowed that amount from one of the suspects and didn't pay it back. (Some news accounts say Brewer owed the suspect $40 for a video game.)
The suspect and some others then tried to steal a bicycle belonging to Brewer's father. Brewer called police and one of the suspects was arrested and released into the custody of his parents.
Brewer's calling the police made him a "snitch," in the view of his attackers, and motivated his being set on fire. Four of the boys charged with attacking Brewer are 15; one is 13. And if you think they came up with the idea of torching "snitches" on their own, you are sadly mistaken.
The "Stop Snitching" craze is all the rage now. Allow me to illustrate how outrageous and silly it has become. Several years ago, a young Baltimore man named Jerrod Hamlett was talking to a friend when a punk, then 13, tossed a bottle at him, striking him in the foot. Hamlett understandably and justifiably objected and chided the punk.
The punk left, returned with a handgun and shot Hamlett dead. When the punk was set to appear in juvenile court to get his obligatory wrist-slapping "punishment," his mother showed up, too.
Wearing a "Stop Snitching" cap.
Yes, there is "Stop Snitching" apparel now. And this woman, who was exposed as a parental failure by the mere fact that her 13-year-old son had just murdered a man, showed up in court lending support to the mentality that led to the murder.
Around the same time, rapper Busta Rhymes was doing a video shoot. A fight broke out on the set, and somebody fatally shot Rhymes' bodyguard. When police investigated, everybody who was there dummied up, including Rhymes. Nobody wanted to be a snitch.
Soon after, Rhymes did a concert at Baltimore's Morgan State University. In a city with one of the highest murder rates in the country, driven, in part, by criminals taking revenge against "snitches," the poster boy for the "Stop Snitching" crusade -- Rhymes -- performed the concert without so much as a whimper of protest from either Morgan State or city officials.
Mind you, Morgan State is a public university, taxpayer-funded. So Rhymes' appearance came courtesy of the Maryland taxpayer.
When I called Morgan State's public affairs office to ask why no university official condemned Rhymes' appearance, the spokesman passed the buck to the student government.
It was their affair and with their funding, the spokesman said, as if university officials didn't have the power to put the kibosh on Rhymes' appearance if they wanted to. They sure as heck would have if Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were scheduled to appear at Morgan State.
Another dim-witted rapper (yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking; are there really any other kind?), Cam'Ron, appeared on a television segment where he told the interviewer that snitching was bad and that he wouldn't do it even if he lived next door to a serial killer.
Cam'Ron subsequently apologized for making what might stand up as the asinine statement of the decade, if not the century, but is anybody wondering what record label signed this guy in the first place?
Record companies seem to have no problem signing rappers who rap about violent retaliation against "snitches." Radio stations play their music; television stations run their videos.
Storeowners sell, with a clear conscience, caps and T-shirts that bear the "Stop Snitching" slogan. All these people are getting rich off the "Stop Snitching" craze, while at the same time reinforcing and legitimizing its underlying message -- it's OK, it's acceptable, to retaliate against "snitches."
All these people should rightly be considered enablers of the five juveniles accused of attacking Brewer. Al Lamberti, the sheriff of Broward County, where the incident took place, told reporters there was no way to "rationalize" or "explain" five teens torching another. There is, indeed, no way to rationalize it.
But we can explain it. And part of the explanation is that the enablers bear much of the blame.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
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