by Jonathan Sadler

Created on: July 02, 2009

The "no snitching" campaign is a poorly camouflaged attempt to intimidate honest, trustworthy, law-abiding citizens. It is an abhorrent thumbing of the nose of the basic fundamentals of civilization, sitting on the edge of a slippery slope that we can't afford to ride. At the bottom of that slippery slope is lawlessness, brutality, and anarchy.

Imagine asking folks in your neighborhood to not report to the police an assault or a murder, while knowing that information would be critical to apprehending the criminal. Imagine being the father or mother, brother or sister of the victim. What then would you think of the "no snitch" mentality...a brutal code amongst nothing more than the criminal element in our society.

This is not "us against them." This is not some honorable code that suggests some noble amount of loyalty to a neighbor or friend. This is an intimidation and encouragement to violate the law of our land by not performing your duty to report violations of our law. Our Federal Criminal Code criminalized "misprision of a felony"....knowing about the commission of a felony crime and not reporting it. The law rightfully criminalized such behavior because accountability to our laws is a fundamental backbone to our civilization.

If we promote no snitching we are effectively saying that our only hope of not being the target of a violent crime is the hope that a police officer happens to be present at the very moment the violent crime is set to take place. Think about it folks....dead bodies can't be witnesses. They can be nothing more than dead bodies. Hence, the no snitch campaign isn't promoting loyalty to one another, it's promoting a disgusting form of thuggery. The concept is not restricted to any one race, one socio-economic group, or one geographic area. Any group that promotes no snitching has turned it's back on it's country, turned it's heart from its neighbor and accepted crime as a legitimate means to making ends meet.

There are several limitations to fighting crime in our country. Some of those limitations include a lack of resources (officers, judges, jails), high tech crimes that might not ever be identified, criminals who might not be identified, and crimes that are never reported. The crimes that are not reported are not done so for various reasons. The nature of the crime might make someone feel embarrassed to report it (sexual crimes and such). Let's not add an out for the criminals by providing another means by which crimes might not be reported. Goodness knows we need all the help we can get in protecting the good honest people of our society. The brave and honorable law enforcement professionals in our country need all the help they can get in protecting us.

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