By Chris Levister

When platinum-selling rap artist Cam'ron brazenly told 60 Minutes recently, that if he knew the whereabouts of a mass killer, he wouldn't utter a word to police: his words spoke volumes.  In fact he refused to ID his own assailant in a Washington D. C. shooting. His chilling statements enraged millions and pulled back the curtain on an age old creed: "Hear no evil; see no evil; speak no evil"

Stop Snitchin’ T-shirts have been banned from many courthouses. Some say the apparel intimidates witnesses and stymies police crime fighting efforts.

"Kids are dying and people aren't talking. If you see someone get killed around here, and you know who did it, if you want to live, you keep your mouth shut," said a mother of two waiting to collect her children in front of Rio Vista Elementary School.

The stigma against snitching is an old combustible blend of cultural and racial baggage many Blacks and Hispanics carry, one reinforced in part by a long history of police-community conflict and mistrust fueled by a new generation of urban voices.

"Under pressure, I lie for ya, die for ya," Lil' Kim once rapped. She served time in federal prison in Philadelphia for refusing to tell a grand jury what she knew about friends involved in a shooting.

"I don't know nothing about nothing. It's the oath. It's the creed of the hood. You have to know when to shut up." That's an ex-con - small time rapper and mouthpiece for a growing street movement known as "STOP SNITCHIN".

He holds up a key ring with a traffic-sign message: "STOP SNITCHIN".  That same message is printed on thousands of hats and shirts on sell in areas plagued by shooting.

No-snitching is not just an African-American problem insists Sgt. Kendall Banks, head of the Riverside Police Department Gang Unit.  He says the depth of no-snitch policy is broad and deeply rooted. "The unwritten code of silence is played out not just among Blacks, it permeates every culture."

"There is such animosity toward police and fear of retaliation in some neighborhoods, that even people who aren't afraid, and who work to keep criminals out, still believe to rat on someone is just short of a cardinal sin," says Dupuy,  a UC Riverside criminal justice major.    

For a small group of Riverside residents huddled in the shadow of a recent gang drive-by shooting, "gunfire and the threat of gang warfare is as pervasive as the air they breathe and the fear they have come to accept. 

"There is this distorted belief that we as Black people are safer and better off letting murderers kill our children while we look the other way. It's outrageous," says ‘aka' (a name she uses), the great grandmother remembers working in her backyard garden on a hot afternoon in 2002.

"I heard shots. The shooting went down fast. Bam bam bam, the bullets came flying from this car. People ran out screaming call 911. Before I knew it there was a kid lying on the street dying." says aka, "I remember it like it was yesterday, the car sped away. When the cops came around the corner everybody got tight lipped."

That was five years ago. Today aka is among a growing number of  eyes and ears fighting the no-snitch creed. "Every time I pick up the phone to talk..., says aka, I put my life on the line. But we've got to take back the neighborhood."

"Few things frustrate our efforts to keep kids, families and neighborhoods safe more than a communities' code of silence. Finding a balance between weeding out criminals and the reality that people have to live in those neighborhoods is a huge challenge. Many are scared stiff. They have to weigh out what's more important: snitching or living. Sometimes it boils down to that," says Banks.

But there's more. Start with the war on drugs. On one hand over the past decades law enforcers have solved more crimes than ever before by turning bystanders and criminals into informants. On the other hand a study by Northwestern University Law School Center on Wrongful Convictions found that 51 of the 111 wrongful deathful penalty convictions of Black men since the 1970s were based in whole or in part on the testimony of witnesses who had an incentive to lie.

Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles says that, based on federal statistics, one out of every four Black men from 20 to 29 is behind bars, on probation, on parole, and under pressure to snitch. She estimates one in 12 of all Black men in the highest-crime neighborhoods are snitching. Suspects hoping for leniency are often pressured by authorities to snitch.

She says informers strain the social fabric of poor minority neighborhoods, where as many as half of the young men have been arrested. "Every family gathering, every party, every backyard barbecue probably has someone who's secretly working as an informer." 

"Informers are a necessary evil," said James Peterson a private investigator and former Detroit cop.  

"The code of silence comes down to whom do you trust - the police or your homey," says Peterson. "It's a movement - a stop stitchin' movement. There's a lot of fear, confusion, witness intimidation and retaliation out there."

Sgt. Banks agrees. He sees a dire need for increased witness protection. Over the years funding for state and federal witness protection programs have been slashed, under staffed and largely dismissed by an untrusting public. Some states have raised witness intimidation from a misdemeanor to a felony. Baltimore launched a media campaign "Keep talking: People have to snitch. That's how criminals get caught."

"The police can't protect witnesses - Are they willing to take a bullet for you? A well meaning witness can get killed, hurt or terrorized for life," said one member of the Riverside group.

"Just as the police need to work harder to gain community trust, the community needs to do more to hold the criminal element accountable," said Banks.

Hence the Black community remains deeply divided: to snitch or not to snitch. "Let me put it this way," says rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy who blasted the Stop Snitchin' campaign on the hip hop group's website: "Let's not let stupid cats use hip hop for the sake of some ‘innerganghood' violent drug thug crime dogs, who have terrorized our neighborhoods and sacrificed our women and children."