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Stop Snitchin'
Rapper Cam'ron: Snitching Hurts His Business, "Code Of Ethics", "Code Of Ethics"
Aug. 12, 2007
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Geoffrey Canada
'The truth is, people having been walking away for years. In 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas; the crime remains unsolved. So does the 1997 shooting of the rapper Notorious B.I.G.
Rap star Cameron Giles, known as Cam'ron or "Killa Cam," got shot in both arms in 2005. The shooting occurred in front of members of Cam'ron's entourage, but to this day, neither they, nor he, have cooperated with police.
Asked why, Cam'ron tells Cooper, "Because with the type of business I'm in, it would definitely hurt my business. And the way that I was raised, I just don't do that. I was raised differently, not to tell."
"If I was shot, I would want to know who did it. I would want the guy to get caught," Cooper remarks.
"But then again, you're not going to be on the stage tonight in the middle of, let's say, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with people with gold and platinum teeth and dreadlocks jumping up and down singing your songs either," Cam'ron says. "You know what I'm saying? We're in two different lines of business."
"So for you it's really about business?" Cooper asks.
"It's about business but it's still also a code of ethics," Cam'ron replies.
Asked if he thinks there is any situation when it's okay to talk to the police, Cam'ron tells Cooper, "Yeah, definitely. Say 'Hello, how you feel, everything alright?' Period."
"That's it?" Cooper asks.
"There's nothing really to talk about with the police, I mean, for what?" Cam'ron says.
"If there's a serial killer living next door to you, though, and you know that person is, you know, killing people, would you be a snitch if you called police and told them?" Cooper asks Cam'ron.
"If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me?" Cam'ron asks. "No, I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him. But I'd probably move… But I'm not gonna call and be like, you know, 'The serial killer's in 4E.'"
If you think Cam'ron is kidding, he’s not. Maintaining street cred sells record – just watch his movie "Killa Season," or his rap videos, and you’ll quickly learn about his drug-dealing past. He wears it as proudly as his jeweled chains.
In a recent video, which was viewed more than a million times on YouTube, Cam'ron engages in what has become a standard attack on a competitor rapper’s brand. He accuses rapper 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, of being a "snitch" for allegedly cooperating with a police investigation.
"You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possibly," Canada says. "And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with. If we had a bunch a people in robes saying this stuff, there would be a movement all over America to shut this thing down. That it's young black millionaires, we are doing nothing."
Cam'ron acknowledges that he is a millionaire and drives "a couple" of Lamborghinis. On the streets of Harlem, he is idolized. A few years ago when he started wearing pink clothing, kids in inner city schools across the country started wearing it too.
"Whatever they dish out, we eat it up," a teenager named Victoria tells Cooper. "They could dish out the nastiest thing in the world, but we still will eat it up."
Cooper met Victoria, Alex, Derrick, Darnell, and Tess through a church-based organization called Uth Turn. They’re 14 through 19 years old, and they told 60 Minutes the "stop snitchin'" code doesn’t just apply to rappers.
"A snitch is a tattletale, a rat, somebody who goes around telling other people business instead of minding they own," Alex tells Cooper.
Asked if he believes that, Alex says, "Yes.
"Anybody who comes forward and talks to the police about something they witnessed, a murder or a crime, are they a snitch?" Cooper asks.
"Yes… It's a crime, remember, in our community, to snitch," says Tess.
Most of these kids had witnessed at least one violent crime but had not helped the police identify the culprits. Victoria saw someone get shot a few years ago; she says she was scared to talk to the police then, and she wouldn’t identify the shooter if the same thing happened today.
Asked why, Victoria says, "Because that's the rules."
</DIV>(CBS) Those rules are making it much harder for the police to catch killers, according to Professor David Kennedy of The John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Kennedy works with communities and police departments all over the country. Nationwide, he says, police are able to arrest a suspect in about 60 percent of the homicide cases they investigate. That’s known as the "clearance rate."
But Kennedy says in some neighborhoods the rate is much, much lower. "I work in communities where the clearance rate for homicides has gone into single digits."
The unwillingness to come forward, Kennedy says, lies at the core of the problem.
"What does it say about what's happening in a community that if you come forward, you lose status in that community?" Cooper asks.
"In these neighborhoods, we are on the verge of, or maybe we already have lost, the rule of law," Kennedy says.
The snitchin' credo is not just a product of hip hop music, he says. Nor are people simply afraid to come forward. As Professor Kennedy sees it, and as Cam'ron portrays it in a movie, the root cause is a long-standing belief that law enforcement is the enemy.
Kennedy says that’s partly because of police tactics used to fight the war on drugs.
Asked if he trusts the police, Alex tells Cooper, "No."
Why not? "'Cause there's been numerous times I've been walking, just being a regular American citizen and getting stopped for no reason," Alex says.
"Is it possible that people aren't coming forward to talk to the police not because of what rappers are saying, but just because they don't trust the police?" Cooper asks New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
"Sure. There's always going to be an element that is not happy with what the police do," Kelly says. "But I think the difference here is the commercialization, if you will, of 'don't snitch.' The glorification of it."
"It's that sort of edgy, you know, kind of ghetto, everybody's kind of into it. It does package well, and it does sell well. And beneath, you know, beneath all of this stuff, there's huge corporate profits in the industries that feed off this," Canada says.
Many of the big-name rappers who rail against snitches are distributed on major record labels. Cam'ron is distributed through Asylum Records, a division of Warner Music.
When the rapper L'il Kim committed perjury rather than implicate members of her entourage in a shooting, Black Entertainment Television launched one of its most popular shows ever, chronicling her days before going to prison.
"Black Entertainment TV ran a reality series about her that was advertised with the tag line, 'She's going to prison with her mouth shut and her head held high,'" Professor Kennedy says. "This is a Joe Camel issue. This is big business selling death."
Black Entertainment Television has said its series on L’il Kim did not condone her crime, but rather took "a very serious look at her life and her choices…." As for Cam'ron's relationship with Warner Music, an executive there declined to comment.
"I dare any of those executives in the major companies to put one of those songs on in board meeting. I dare 'em. They'd never do it," Canada says. "You put on some song that has the n-word 50 times that talks about killing and murder, oh no. Board members don't want to hear that kind of stuff."
"I just think that rap takes way more slack than the video games and the movies. We don't make guns. Smith and Wesson makes guns," Cam'ron argues. "Like, white people make guns and bullets and all we're doing is rhyming and putting words together."
"If your record label said to you, 'Look, we're not going to promote you, we're not going to distribute you if you keep calling Curtis Jackson a snitch.' Or you keep, writing about guns and selling drugs, would you stop?" Cooper asks.
"No record company in the world would say 'We're not promoting if you keep calling somebody a snitch. They know what makes money," Cam'ron says. "A record company would never be that stupid. Ever."
After this story first aired in April, Cam'ron was widely criticized for saying he wouldn’t help the police catch a serial killer. Cam'ron later issued the following apology in response to his comments:
"In 2005, I was a victim of a violent crime. I was shot multiple times without provocation by two armed men who attempted to carjack my vehicle. Although I was a crime victim, I didn't feel like I could cooperate with the police investigation. Where I come from, once word gets out that you've cooperated with the police that only makes you a bigger target of criminal violence. That is a dark reality in so many neighborhoods like mine across America. I'm not saying its right, but its reality. And it's not unfounded. here's a harsh reality around violence and criminal justice in our inner cities."
"But my experience in no way justifies what I said. Looking back now, I can see how those comments could be viewed as offensive, especially to those who have suffered their own personal tragedies or to those who put their lives on the line to protect our citizens from crime. Please understand that I was expressing my own personal frustration at my own personal circumstances. I in no way was intending to be malicious or harmful. I apologize deeply for this error in judgment."
Statement of Asylum Records:
"We expect and encourage all of our artists to behave responsibly and lawfully and we were gratified that Mr. Giles apologized for his remarks. We applaud "60 Minutes" for shedding further light on these important and complex issues and believe that the resulting dialogue among artists, law enforcement, community leaders and the media industry has been and will continue to be a constructive one."
Rapper Cam'ron: Snitching Hurts His Business, "Code Of Ethics", "Code Of Ethics"
Aug. 12, 2007
';
';
'The truth is, people having been walking away for years. In 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas; the crime remains unsolved. So does the 1997 shooting of the rapper Notorious B.I.G.
Rap star Cameron Giles, known as Cam'ron or "Killa Cam," got shot in both arms in 2005. The shooting occurred in front of members of Cam'ron's entourage, but to this day, neither they, nor he, have cooperated with police.
Asked why, Cam'ron tells Cooper, "Because with the type of business I'm in, it would definitely hurt my business. And the way that I was raised, I just don't do that. I was raised differently, not to tell."
"If I was shot, I would want to know who did it. I would want the guy to get caught," Cooper remarks.
"But then again, you're not going to be on the stage tonight in the middle of, let's say, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with people with gold and platinum teeth and dreadlocks jumping up and down singing your songs either," Cam'ron says. "You know what I'm saying? We're in two different lines of business."
"So for you it's really about business?" Cooper asks.
"It's about business but it's still also a code of ethics," Cam'ron replies.
Asked if he thinks there is any situation when it's okay to talk to the police, Cam'ron tells Cooper, "Yeah, definitely. Say 'Hello, how you feel, everything alright?' Period."
"That's it?" Cooper asks.
"There's nothing really to talk about with the police, I mean, for what?" Cam'ron says.
"If there's a serial killer living next door to you, though, and you know that person is, you know, killing people, would you be a snitch if you called police and told them?" Cooper asks Cam'ron.
"If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me?" Cam'ron asks. "No, I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him. But I'd probably move… But I'm not gonna call and be like, you know, 'The serial killer's in 4E.'"
If you think Cam'ron is kidding, he’s not. Maintaining street cred sells record – just watch his movie "Killa Season," or his rap videos, and you’ll quickly learn about his drug-dealing past. He wears it as proudly as his jeweled chains.
In a recent video, which was viewed more than a million times on YouTube, Cam'ron engages in what has become a standard attack on a competitor rapper’s brand. He accuses rapper 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, of being a "snitch" for allegedly cooperating with a police investigation.
"You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possibly," Canada says. "And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with. If we had a bunch a people in robes saying this stuff, there would be a movement all over America to shut this thing down. That it's young black millionaires, we are doing nothing."
Cam'ron acknowledges that he is a millionaire and drives "a couple" of Lamborghinis. On the streets of Harlem, he is idolized. A few years ago when he started wearing pink clothing, kids in inner city schools across the country started wearing it too.
"Whatever they dish out, we eat it up," a teenager named Victoria tells Cooper. "They could dish out the nastiest thing in the world, but we still will eat it up."
Cooper met Victoria, Alex, Derrick, Darnell, and Tess through a church-based organization called Uth Turn. They’re 14 through 19 years old, and they told 60 Minutes the "stop snitchin'" code doesn’t just apply to rappers.
"A snitch is a tattletale, a rat, somebody who goes around telling other people business instead of minding they own," Alex tells Cooper.
Asked if he believes that, Alex says, "Yes.
"Anybody who comes forward and talks to the police about something they witnessed, a murder or a crime, are they a snitch?" Cooper asks.
"Yes… It's a crime, remember, in our community, to snitch," says Tess.
Most of these kids had witnessed at least one violent crime but had not helped the police identify the culprits. Victoria saw someone get shot a few years ago; she says she was scared to talk to the police then, and she wouldn’t identify the shooter if the same thing happened today.
Asked why, Victoria says, "Because that's the rules."
</DIV>(CBS) Those rules are making it much harder for the police to catch killers, according to Professor David Kennedy of The John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Kennedy works with communities and police departments all over the country. Nationwide, he says, police are able to arrest a suspect in about 60 percent of the homicide cases they investigate. That’s known as the "clearance rate."
But Kennedy says in some neighborhoods the rate is much, much lower. "I work in communities where the clearance rate for homicides has gone into single digits."
The unwillingness to come forward, Kennedy says, lies at the core of the problem.
"What does it say about what's happening in a community that if you come forward, you lose status in that community?" Cooper asks.
"In these neighborhoods, we are on the verge of, or maybe we already have lost, the rule of law," Kennedy says.
The snitchin' credo is not just a product of hip hop music, he says. Nor are people simply afraid to come forward. As Professor Kennedy sees it, and as Cam'ron portrays it in a movie, the root cause is a long-standing belief that law enforcement is the enemy.
Kennedy says that’s partly because of police tactics used to fight the war on drugs.
Asked if he trusts the police, Alex tells Cooper, "No."
Why not? "'Cause there's been numerous times I've been walking, just being a regular American citizen and getting stopped for no reason," Alex says.
"Is it possible that people aren't coming forward to talk to the police not because of what rappers are saying, but just because they don't trust the police?" Cooper asks New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
"Sure. There's always going to be an element that is not happy with what the police do," Kelly says. "But I think the difference here is the commercialization, if you will, of 'don't snitch.' The glorification of it."
"It's that sort of edgy, you know, kind of ghetto, everybody's kind of into it. It does package well, and it does sell well. And beneath, you know, beneath all of this stuff, there's huge corporate profits in the industries that feed off this," Canada says.
Many of the big-name rappers who rail against snitches are distributed on major record labels. Cam'ron is distributed through Asylum Records, a division of Warner Music.
When the rapper L'il Kim committed perjury rather than implicate members of her entourage in a shooting, Black Entertainment Television launched one of its most popular shows ever, chronicling her days before going to prison.
"Black Entertainment TV ran a reality series about her that was advertised with the tag line, 'She's going to prison with her mouth shut and her head held high,'" Professor Kennedy says. "This is a Joe Camel issue. This is big business selling death."
Black Entertainment Television has said its series on L’il Kim did not condone her crime, but rather took "a very serious look at her life and her choices…." As for Cam'ron's relationship with Warner Music, an executive there declined to comment.
"I dare any of those executives in the major companies to put one of those songs on in board meeting. I dare 'em. They'd never do it," Canada says. "You put on some song that has the n-word 50 times that talks about killing and murder, oh no. Board members don't want to hear that kind of stuff."
"I just think that rap takes way more slack than the video games and the movies. We don't make guns. Smith and Wesson makes guns," Cam'ron argues. "Like, white people make guns and bullets and all we're doing is rhyming and putting words together."
"If your record label said to you, 'Look, we're not going to promote you, we're not going to distribute you if you keep calling Curtis Jackson a snitch.' Or you keep, writing about guns and selling drugs, would you stop?" Cooper asks.
"No record company in the world would say 'We're not promoting if you keep calling somebody a snitch. They know what makes money," Cam'ron says. "A record company would never be that stupid. Ever."
After this story first aired in April, Cam'ron was widely criticized for saying he wouldn’t help the police catch a serial killer. Cam'ron later issued the following apology in response to his comments:
"In 2005, I was a victim of a violent crime. I was shot multiple times without provocation by two armed men who attempted to carjack my vehicle. Although I was a crime victim, I didn't feel like I could cooperate with the police investigation. Where I come from, once word gets out that you've cooperated with the police that only makes you a bigger target of criminal violence. That is a dark reality in so many neighborhoods like mine across America. I'm not saying its right, but its reality. And it's not unfounded. here's a harsh reality around violence and criminal justice in our inner cities."
"But my experience in no way justifies what I said. Looking back now, I can see how those comments could be viewed as offensive, especially to those who have suffered their own personal tragedies or to those who put their lives on the line to protect our citizens from crime. Please understand that I was expressing my own personal frustration at my own personal circumstances. I in no way was intending to be malicious or harmful. I apologize deeply for this error in judgment."
Statement of Asylum Records:
"We expect and encourage all of our artists to behave responsibly and lawfully and we were gratified that Mr. Giles apologized for his remarks. We applaud "60 Minutes" for shedding further light on these important and complex issues and believe that the resulting dialogue among artists, law enforcement, community leaders and the media industry has been and will continue to be a constructive one."
