Snitchin' On A Spring Day in Harlem
By Keith Boykin, in pop culture
Wednesday, May 2 2007, 1:10AM
It happened at 2:05 yesterday afternoon. That's when I walked outside of the Blockbuster store on 125th Street in Harlem. I had just purchased two DVDs. I paid $19.95 for Dreamgirls and $21.95 for The Last King of Scotland, but I was happy about the opportunity to support two important black films. But as soon as I stepped foot outside of the door, I saw a young black man running down the middle of the street. His behavior looked suspicious, so I made a point to remember him in case I needed to identify him later. He was tall and thin, wearing a white tank top, blue jeans and a doo rag.
Turns out I didn't need to remember what he was wearing after all. There were dozens of witnesses at that moment. But as I turned away from the street I noticed a middle-aged black woman walking along the sidewalk with some of her friends. She was motioning her arms and urging the young man along as though she were cheering for Carl Lewis at the Olympics. As I passed her, I heard her tell her friends, "Fuck them damn cops. I can't stand them."
Twenty yards later I realized what had happened. There I came across two police officers (shown above) who were bending over to clean up a mess of CDs and DVDs that were falling out of a huge black suitcase and now strewn across the sidewalk.
"Free DVDs!" said a man's voice behind me. "Not today," one of the officers replied. "As many of those things as I done bought that don't work, I ought to get something out of it," the man's voice shot back. The police officer continued picking up the stray DVDs as he responded. "Well the next time you see one of those guys running down the street you ought to stop him." Yeah, right, I thought. Don't count on that happening anytime soon in the current climate.
It was another reminder of the pervasiveness of the "no snitchin'" mentality among some quarters of our community. A crime is committed in broad daylight and some of us are waving on the criminals so they can get away while a few others are busy trying to get a hook up. I wonder if that woman on the sidewalk would have cheered on the young man if he were running away with her TV set or her expensive Ipod.
A Mob Scene On Lenox Avenue
That experience alone was enough for one day but that wasn't the end of the day. A few hours later, I was walking up Lenox Avenue on my way to a meeting when I saw a young man walking through a crowd with no shirt on. You see this a lot in Harlem, so it was no big deal. But usually the guys start taking off their shirts when the temperature gets in the 80s. It couldn't have been more than 70 degrees outside yesterday afternoon when I saw him.
Less than a minute later I saw another young man walking down Lenox with his shirt off. He too was in the midst of a crowd. And then a few seconds after that I spotted a third young man walking shirtless down the street. Wow! I wonder what summer's going to be like if guys are walking around like this in early spring, I thought.
Little did I realize the three young men were involved in some sort of pre-combat posture. I heard a loud noise as I approached my destination at 130th Street. I looked across the broad expanse of Lenox Avenue and saw a throng of kids swarming down on a young black man in a black shirt. The three young shirtless men were right in the middle of it. They pounced on another young man with blow after blow after blow. The helpless victim ran out into the street and back to the sidewalk as a chaotic scene exploded throughout the entire length of the block.
I pulled out my cell phone to call the police, but I noticed a fire truck a block away and a police car not much farther. So I decided to take pictures and video with my phone. The crowd moved to the northeast corner of 130th Street, where someone separated the attackers from the victim and it appeared the situation was about to die down. Cars slowed, onlookers watched in disbelief, and everyone seemed to be trying to figure out what was going on.
I snapped a photo from across the street (shown above) when suddenly the police car pulled up. One or two people took off running but for the most part the crowd of 30 or so people did not disperse. I lost track of the attackers and the victims in the mêlée, but the scene reminded me of one of the major challenges in fighting crime in the community. Young black men are often portrayed as the perpetrators of these crimes, and sometimes the police are too apt to target them. But young black men are also most often the victims of crime as well. They're lives are just as important as the lives of those who attack them. But the whole "no snitchin'" mentality protects the guilty ones who prey on the community and endangers the safety of the innocent.
There is too much crime in many of our neighborhoods for us to turn a blind eye just because we don't want to help the police. Yes, some cops are crooked. And yes, police brutality and racial profiling are far too common in some of our police departments. But that's no reason not to help the police solve those crimes where we have information that can save a life, get a dangerous person off the streets, or prevent an innocent man from going to jail.
I don't think our communities will ever become safer if we're not willing to do something about the crime that takes place in front of our very own eyes. I know that the rapper Cam'ron told Anderson Cooper last week on "60 Minutes" that he would not call the police to report a serial killer if one lived next door to him. I don't believe him, but I do know this. I once lived in a building with a child molester. I didn't know about it until after the police came one day and arrested the man and took him off to jail. I don't care what anybody says. If I had known that he was committing those crimes, I would have called the police in a New York minute.
Call me a snitch if you want. I call it protecting my neighborhood.
Comments conceal
Jeff Hobbs
May 2 2007, 2:14AM
Good for you Keith. Stand up for whats right. I just hope YOU don't get hurt in violence like that. You are far too important to us. :) I do think I saw something on one of the news shows where Cam'ron apologized for what he said about no snitchin'. Am I wrong? I swear I saw it.
Seahawk
May 2 2007, 9:04AM
(1) Cam'ron did release an apology, though it read as if it were written by a publicist or record company exec.
(2) Is New York really this out of control and violent? Damn!
Andre
May 2 2007, 10:10AM
What amazes me is that I have read that white folks are flocking to Harlem for the cheap housing, with a populace filled like this middle aged woman who is apparently clueless and had no home training about civil duty, and had it been her child murdered or something she would be one of those they show screaming, whooping and hollering like a runaway slave wanting help from the same police she hates. They had better watch it, because, white folks seem to have sense that not all police are bad, unlike those who use this thug logic. I wonder if the person who this kid mugged or assaulted woke up today feeling good about what happened, and if he or she should have called thee police?
Black people have got to be the oddest people in this country and a total embarrassment to those of us who follow the rules.
Troy
May 2 2007, 10:17AM
Excellent article but then there's the silent crimes we never hear about never getting reported or talked about; the silence of gay brothers and sisters who can party hard as they can on any given day but won't see that their individual input in the fight against homophobia starts right where they are. Getting Ryan White Bills passed? Networking within the community to make it grow in a positive way? Helping others as we help ourselves OR should we all sit by and be gentrified & pacified out with not doing nothin? It's a little bit deeper than snitching...
Liquid Fonts
May 2 2007, 10:31AM
Thanks for that Keith...glad to see not everyone is signing up for the stitches for sniches campaign....luv the title too.
Stay safe
Ostend Street
May 2 2007, 10:55AM
Keith I hear you and I am in agreement with you. I visit New York at least two or three times a year and I felt relatively safe most of the time and I try to be vigilant because crime can occur anywhere. Now, I am beginning to feel uneasy about what I am hearing. Visiting New York is always a positive experience for me. Just the sightseeing is pleasurable. As one writer said: Be safe Keith.
LaRufus
May 2 2007, 11:37AM
I thought that Harlem was on the upswing and this sort of street violence was on the decline. Keith, child, you had best be careful living there, it still seems way too scary and keep 911 on speed dial. And, this black on black crime, still one of the most silly things that happens.
allegro
May 2 2007, 12:41PM
It's a bird.....it's a plane....KEITH BOYKIN....CRIMEFIGHTER!!! He runs through the streets of HARLEM ripping open his buttoned down OXFORD to reveal his SUPERMAN spandex-like costume. With his trusty camera cell phone in hand and the use of his SUPER MEMORY powers, Keith roams the streets of Harlem ever ready to identify the sinister characters of this otherwise peaceful urban community.
Luddite
May 2 2007, 12:42PM
So when will MidwestTroll chime in and show Keith the errors of his ways in actually caring about black on black crime?
Andre: excellent post! I was thinking the same thing. If the middle aged black woman had a violent crime committed against her or her family she would be screaming and wailing on TV that the cops weren't doing a damn thing about it because she was black.
chris-leo
May 2 2007, 1:51PM
THIS IS WAY BEYOND BLACK. every poor neighborhood goes thru this "DON'T SQUEAL" ethos.
it's about being poor and having underground economies to pay rent, like loan sharking and selling weed, and it's about your neighbors and relatives being illegal aliens. it's about predatory cops who do shakedowns, because they know what you're doing isn't legal, and about those cops who knock heads to get information because they need info, and because they can. it's about having an illegal gun or running a brothel out of your livingroom, while your kids are at school.
such people WON'T have a CALL THE COPS FIRST mentality. even if you just do hair out of your kitchen without a license, it's easier to look away than to call 911 and risk having to go to court. if you squeal, you're in danger, and if you don't, you're still in danger.
GET READY THOUGH. the wealthy new white neighbor will be calling the cops, with a quickness.
given all that, i still say kudos to Keith for doing the right thing.
BITTER
May 2 2007, 9:10PM
Our community has been so mistreated by the police, I can kinda understand black folks' reluctance to contact them when trouble erupts. But if someone doesn't do it, crime will be worse than what it is. Don't be afraid; if you see some shit going down - CALL THEM!!! I have. Fifteen years ago, fresh out of the Navy and living with my moms, one of my brother's friends was driving a stolen car up our block - drunk/stoned out of his mind. I was sitting on my porch and proceeded to watch him wipe out about six or seven cars, then smash into a pole, get out of the car, and staggered off. I got a real good look at him on more than one occassion (OT, but boy was FINE!! ;) ). Anyway when the police come, me, Mr. Navy Veteran, proceeds to tell the cops what happened and who the guy was. The cops asked me to get in the car and drive up and down the streets until we found the guy. Two blocks from the house, I spotted him and started pointing. "Don't do THAT", the cop sitting in the back with (continued)...
Mitchell
May 2 2007, 10:30PM
I hardly call these two incidents major crime incidents. You never provided us with the ages of the guys with shirts and no shirts. They sounded very young to me. And, I am glad to see they chose to fight with their hands and not with guns, which can hurt other folks.
The other guy sounded like a guy just trying to make a buck. Now, if he robbed Blockbuster that is another story. But, if he is selling bootleg videos I could care less.
What worries me is the drug dealing and drug users that tend to destroy our neighborhoods. If we take on street gangs dealing in drugs are neighborhoods would improve by 100 percent.
Michael-Vincent Crea
May 3 2007, 12:34AM
Peace to all! Keith your prudential judgment is replaced
by a hysterical, very bourgeois, yes, other-side-of-the-
street assessment. First, dvd vendors, usually African immigrants are not committing crimes: such sales are only violations. I moved to Harlem in 1992. Crack viles layered the ground, like locust shells. In '94, Guiliani drove Africans vending bags away with mounted police. Inauguarating steel cordons, as used upstate at cattle auctions, against African vendors, NYPD now controls LGBT's on Christopher St. at Pride. China bootlegs dvd's
while stadium building around Africa w/o a word on Sudan slaughtering in Darfur. That's criminal! More so is 50% NY Black men w/o work, yet, voices like yours support a police state siege. "Snitching" is as phony a 'BLACK' issue as "Down Lows" causing AIDS. I've stood aside 2 men on Lenox Ave. fighting with ten-inch blades, talking them down. As a pastor I MUST be willing to lay down my life in LOVE. Y[our] spectator 'spirituality' society is based on FEAR.
Steve
May 3 2007, 1:15AM
I've read with interest comments on some other blogs railing against white folks, asking why real estate values go up when white folks move in, etc, and so on. I would propose it's because white folks call the cops! Crime and other BS is what keeps people down. If a group (not specifying any ethnic community here, because it can happen amongst anyone, even white folks) decides they would rather live with crime, then they might as well get used to living in poverty and with property that isn't worth much. That kind of environment spawns unemployment, attracts those who abuse substances, etc and so on. It's a pretty simple formula really - if you want to live in a better environment, you have to be part of the solution, else you're part of the problem.
Old Head
May 3 2007, 8:05AM
Why do we as Black people always use the most uninformed and unenlightened behavior of some Black folks to reflect the attitudes and behavior of the whole? Why is being critical of the cops being tolerant of crime? Why is the mob behavior of Black boys worse than the mob behavior of the Republican Party?
How does some Black teenager wearing a T-shirt as a fashion statement rise to the level of reflecting Black folks attitude towards crime in general? It doesn't. Maybe we should heed that hip-hop warning of "don't believe the hype". Don't Snitch like the Down Low is a red herring that makes Black people once again the bane of Western Civilization.
So unclutch those pearls gurls! Stop using out of context statements to justify and grandstand about our own prejudices and self righteousness.
TITI
May 3 2007, 8:30AM
BY THE WAY THOSE CRIMES ONLY AFFECT THE COMMINUTY OF THOSE WHO REFUSED TO SNICH, NOT THE POLICE OR THE WHITE FOLK.BLACK FOLK CAN IGNORE THIS CRIME TO THEIR OWN EXPENSE...IF YOU TURN A BLIND EYES TO THE WOUND IN YOUR ANKLE,IT WILL ROT...
eVisitor
May 3 2007, 7:11PM
Gutless little snitch.
nick
May 8 2007, 12:28AM
WOW.. I was leaving my friends home on that same day, I decided to walk home to 149, because it was such a nice day, plus I just recently moved to Harlem so I thought it would be a good day to check out the neighbrhood, I witnesed this same brawl, and I was so effected by this, because the boys looked so young, and to se all this misplaced anger, black on black fighting, it just broke my heart. It kinda ruined my day, the shame of it all, the disgust and anger I felt. WHY do they have to come to this. Recyled ignorance, thats all I see since I have moved up here, mommy and daddy actin a fool, so baby girl and babby boy act a fool....
IVANMUSTPLAY
May 9 2007, 5:49PM
While it is imperative that we report serious crime to the authorities, often crime is underreported in our neighborhoods because of a history of maltreatment by these self-same authorities. Re: one of the examples of crime reported by Keith: we don't know the whole story, he may have seen only the backend of that disturbance. I am only semi-sarcastic when I say that maybe the guys giving the black shirted fellow a beat-down were concerned citizens who were taking matters into their own hands (not advised) against a child molester or some such. If this was not the case (and I admit I would rather err on the side of caution) the police should be alerted. Re: black on black crime: Personally I loathe the phrase. When have you heard anyone say white on white crime? People usually get into disagreements, fights, etc. with folks that are nearest and sometime dearest, remember charity as well as larceny begins at home. Again, serious crime of course should be reported, but police involvement often =(s) death.
Real life!
May 10 2007, 1:28AM
Just a side note. It's cheaper at Best Buy and Walmart for your movies my friend! Thanks for a cool website.
Lucca Lax
May 12 2007, 1:37PM
Though I agree that violence and brutality are problems in the U.S., NYC and Harlem in particular, we need to begin to think of ways to make our communities safer and to hold individuals accountable without relying on the police. Keith, you acknowledge that some cops are crooked and that police brutality targets black people, yet seem satisfied to call on this system nonetheless. Let me suggest that these officers are not a few bad apples, but rather part of a system - like the prison - that is an inheritance of slavery and that operates by the same logic of terror and racism. We must make the connections between the organizing and intellectual work that has been done against the prison industrial complex and the "no stitchin" ethos and aesthetic. This tie is urgent when we remember the proximity to state violence that some members of our community inhabit. For example, 50% of violent incidents against trans people are committed by the cops.
Comment Preview