The lie that is told to our people is that we don’t snitch. That crime wouldn’t be so bad in the hood if we would just tell what we see. They even have public service announcement to drive home this nonsense. What is it . . . Just Tell It? Notwithstanding the fact that they really don’t need us to snitch in the age of cctv cameras everywhere, phone tapping (lawful and otherwise) and drones overhead, WE have been just telling it. When you tell a poor community that there is a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of such and such, what do you think happens? The hotlines light up. The truly monstrous thing is that the reward is hardly ever paid, if you call with important information, you just have to trust them to get back in touch with you. The reality of the situation is this, all they need is a name. Once a suspect is in custody, the machine begins its relentless grind. In most cases this is how it works. Lets revisit everyone’s favorite criminal. Old Bobby got out of prison. Because he’s a ex-con, employers are not falling all over themselves to employ him. Additionally, picking locks and grinding are not exactly marketable skills. So he meets a guy he was locked up with, lets call him Tyrone. Tyrone tells Bobby, he has a lick but it can only be done by two people. There’s a check cashing spot over on the avenue that gets their cash in on Thursday night at 11:00 pm. Tyrone knows this because his baby momma works there. So they decide to be behind the dumpster at 10:45 pm on Thursday night. Quick in and out, easy money. All Bobby has to do is watch the door. What happens instead is what happens in many attempted robberies. They run into that dedicated employee that loves his employer’s money more than he loves his life. He makes a move, shots are fired, white man is killed, no money is changes hands and now both Tyrone and Bobby are suspects in a capital offense. The news crews set up shop outside of the business and report 24 hours a day on the latest developments. The next day a reward is offered for info into the brutal murder of the the veteran of Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Normandy, you choose the war, the mayor gives his undying pledge to capture the “animals” that took the life of this brave citizen. All that goes over the head of most in the community. What we do pay attention to is the fact that if I tell what I know, I can pay off my Rent-A-Center furniture and my $5000 car that I paid the tote-the-note place $18000 for. So Tyrone baby momma makes that call. They arrest Tyrone, usually at baby momma’s house, since she harboring the very fugitive she turned in, she’s not eligible for the award. In fact, they will arrest her just to make her ineligible. Bobby, however, thinks he’s in the clear. He didn’t go in, he didn’t have a gun and he DAMN sure didn’t shoot nobody. Up until the SWAT team kicks his mother’s door in and haul him away. What happens then is they put them both in a interrogation room. There’s no good cop, bad cop. They don’t torture him. They calmly walk in and tell Bobby that they have Tyrone in the other room and Tyrone says you’re the shooter. Since you’re a three time loser and the vic is a white man just doing his job, looks like you’re getting the needle. Trick is, at that very same time, they are telling Tyrone the same thing. “Look Tyrone, the white boy is in there saying your black ass shot that dude cause he was white. Looks like its the needle for you.” Almost simultaneously, the last sentence is “unless you turn on him, you taking the hit, we got other witnesses saying that he told them he did it. So we don’t really need you. We just giving you a chance to save your own life.” This plays out in a variety of ways, different crimes, different number of suspects but all the same outcome. Bobby gives a statement on Tyrone and vice versa. So they both plead guilty to save their lives. Sometimes they don’t even have a witness. A lot of innocent brothers end up in prison like that. You have to weigh the odds, they telling you they have a two priests, a nun and a virgin that positively identified you out of a lineup. The romantic notion that if you ain’t guilty, go to trial goes out the window at that point. You’re doing the math, accept the plea deal and get out in five years or go to trial and risk 100 years in prison and possibly NEVER getting out. You know without a shadow of a doubt that the system can produce two priests, five nuns and ten virgins that will swear on their momma that you were the one who did it. There’s even a procedure for that. At the lineup they suggest to them to pay real close attention to suspect number nine. “Are you sure it wasn’t number nine?” If they are sure, they just don’t use that evidence. No one has any way of knowing that a witness said you didn’t do it. If you find that out after you plead guilty, oh well, you forfeit your right to appeal by pleading guilty. Oh, you didn’t know? Plea deals are non-appealable convictions, even if another criminal comes forward and confesses. Clap hands together, on to the next set of fools. That’s truly the way a prosecutor’s office has a 90% conviction rate. They force the suspects into plea deals. If you don’t believe what I’m telling you, ask any ten people you know with criminal records and see don’t eight to nine of them tell you that someone turned state’s evidence (snitched) on them. By telling you that you guys would be better off if you just told the police what you saw, justifies more money for occupying police forces in your communities even though crime is still out of control in most areas. What was it over 30 people shot in Chicago last weekend alone?

Based upon what I’ve read and lived in the system. We have to realize that there is NO group of organized crime that the police have not penetrated. Gang warfare/killing in the inner city could be eradicated within a week. Think about it. There’s the camera on every block in the hood. There are taps on every phone. There’s a snitch in EVERY gang. Not that tv crap where they take a cop and he goes “undercover” in the gang. No, they just grab a guy on the periphery that everyone trusts and have him report everything he sees. They bust the young kid with the pocket full of crack and tell him that he won’t go to jail, all he has to do tell them what they want to know. Ever hear the old saying “there are no OLD drug dealers?” That is true, all these rappers boasting about the kilos they moved, that’s make believe. You’re not turning your criminal enterprise into a legitimate rap empire, that is the purpose of the Racketeering Influenced Criminal Enterprise Act, known colloquially as the RICO act. In a nutshell it means that if the government can prove that one thin dime of your “legit” capital was produced with one thin dime of money generated in or in furtherance of a criminal act, the federales can take EVERYTHING. Additionally, if that person happens to call your cell phone, unless its a wrong number, you are on the hook as a co-conspirator. If you know and don’t tell, that’s conspiracy. So don’t believe the hype. The government allows drugs to flow into the community because they get paid on the street end as well as the incarceration end. Those individuals who end up in these rural prisons, guess what, even though they can’t vote, they are counted as “population” for census purposes. That means increased federal money for that county. So those politicians who “represent” those areas get paid as well.

Now comes the best part. Prisons are now out in the open commercial enterprises. With the advent of shareholder owned corporations such as CCA, GEO group and the surrealistically named Management and Training Corporation, now it is written into law that if a prison is built in an economically depressed rural area, the State is contractually bound to KEEP THE PRISON FULL. Not at 85% capacity but 100% full. If not, then the taxpayers have to pay the COMPANY that built the prison millions in fines. Now what does the poor state do? They come up with new and inventive ways to make sure there will always be enough poor souls to fill those cells. They call it “get tough on crime” when in reality its get soft for corporations.

Yes my friends, crime is big business in our community. We can rail all day against the senseless killing and rampant crime that exists all around us. But never forget that it will take more than just us deciding not to shoot each other. That’s a battle within a larger war for the hearts and minds of poor people. Next we get to how to get out and stay out of prison.

Drops mic and walks from stage drippin’ blackness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/building.html

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=465

http://www2.davidson.edu/news/news_archives/archives99/9910_anderson.html

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime