People! It's Monday. It's time to get the debate ball rolling.
Our topic this time out is the Snitching Problem. Philly Confidential spent some time recently chatting with a veteran cop who said getting murder and shooting witnesses to come forward right now in this city is tougher than it's been in ages.
So what's the holdup? Are people afraid of being killed for telling? Do they lack faith that the legal and justice systems will keep perps off the streets? Or do they just not give a damn, so long as blood doesn't get spilled on their door step?
Discuss!
Posted by david at May 8, 2006 04:38 PMPeople stay silent for all the reasons you listed; it's tough to fault them. Sadly, protection from the perps/scum cannot be guaranteed. And there's no guarantee the perps/scum will stay locked up for a long, long time because our legal and justice systems are notorious for favoring the bad guys.
Posted by: Unfinished Business at May 9, 2006 07:47 AMIn Germantown, a neighborhood with crime problems but that is mostly middle-class, I'm surprised at how many neighbors who are resolutely anti-drugs, anti-crime, and who devote a great deal of their time to watching the street and looking out for their neighbors, still would rather not resort to calling the police.
In my neighborhood, I would say that my neighbors may actually be more likely to directly confront those people causing problems than to involve police. So it's not just fear or apathy, but a sense that the police are really outsiders who often aren't even aware of who lives in the neighborhood or what kinds of crime are being committed, let alone make the appropriate response to neighborhood concerns or crime.
Especially for Philadelphia, I'm a fan of the "broken windows" theory -- that neighbors learn to trust police and gov't to handle larger issues when they immediately address "quality-of-life" problems like broken windows, grafitti, abandoned cars and houses, and trash on the street. I think, too, that what this does is it helps neighbors meet and get to know the police and other city officials who protect them, and vice versa.
I also think police precincts should make more efforts to reach out to neighborhoods, not just to meet the neighbors or to do drug and crime awareness programs in schools or with community groups, but also to recruit new officers from the neighborhood. The neighborhoods that seem to have the best relationships with the police are those where the sons and daughters of the community are on the force. But many of Philly's precincts don't actually map very well onto particular neighborhoods, which exacerbates things. I'm thinking specifically of the 14th, which covers most of NW philly from Nicetown to Chestnut Hill, or Northern Liberties, which is split into the 6th and 26th along Poplar St.
There's more to say, but I'm sure I've said enough.
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