To Snitch, or Not to Snitch?

A Community College class tries to understand the question that's dividing the city.

by Doron Taussig

snitching

Rick Frei, a professor at Community College, and student Jaclyn O'Brien, conducted a survey on attitudes about snitching. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Philadelphia has a problem with snitching — or, more accurately, a lack of it. For years, law enforcement officials have lambasted the public for its reticence to cooperate with police, and the fact that, as a result, a big portion of murders in the city go unsolved. Citizens, for their part, have responded by saying that Lynne Abraham wouldn't snitch, either, if her life were on the line. And what began as a pragmatic concern — about violent retribution against witnesses — has evolved into a cultural norm. This we know.

But how much do we really know?

Do we know how snitching is defined in the minds of the public? Do we know under what circumstances people are likely to cooperate with police? Do we know what life experiences contribute to someone's attitude about snitching? And do we know these things in a quantifiable way?

We don't, and that's what piqued the interest of Rick Frei and his students at the Community College of Philadelphia. Frei, a psychology professor who — with a long, biker's beard and a tattoo of a skull occupying much of his right shoulder, very much doesn't look the part — teaches an applied psychology course that requires students to conduct a large-scale survey on a subject of their choosing. This fall, the class decided to study "snitching": Who is willing to cooperate with the police, when and why?

"The Snitching Project" began by holding focus groups around the city to figure out what questions to ask. One of the first things the students noticed was that people defined "snitching" in myriad ways. Frei, for instance, went into the project thinking "snitching" referred to one criminal diming out another to get his sentence reduced. But some of the subjects of focus groups understood any form of cooperation to be snitching. One said that his brother could be killed in his arms, and he still wouldn't go to the police.

Maps produced by Jamie Picardy For more information visit the Snitching Study Website (CLICK IMAGES FOR LARGER VERSIONS)

"We were all using different language," Frei says.

They decided to include a question about the definition in the survey: Respondents were given a number of different scenarios, from "a child tattles on his brother," to "a person rats on someone else to reduce his sentence," and asked whether each was an example of snitching. Beyond that, respondents were asked about demographic characteristics, potentially relevant life experiences (such as being the victim of a crime) and factors that might influence whether they'd cooperate with police: whether the victim was a child, whether the crime in question was violent.

The definition of snitching, it turns out, is indeed a matter of interpretation. According to the survey, men, and black men in particular, are more likely to define the term broadly. The act most universally considered to be snitching is diming out someone else for a reduced sentence (83 percent); the act considered snitching by the least amount of respondents is answering questions at a crime scene (16 percent). Fifty-six percent of students consider tattling on a brother an example of snitching. Overall, Frei wrote in a summary, "There seems to be a relationship between snitching and initiative. The more the situation requires the person to take initiative ... the more likely it is to be viewed as snitching."

As for when students would snitch, the survey found that students are more likely to cooperate with police if the victim is a senior citizen, child, friend, relative, disabled person or the student themselves; they're less likely to cooperate if the victim is a drug dealer (women and older students were more swayed by these factors). Whether a crime is violent has little effect on whether students will talk to police, though a "guarantee" that a criminal would be off the streets increases willingness to cooperate.

Other findings include that students who used illegal drugs recently were less likely to work with police than their counterparts, and that personally knowing a police officer had no effect on whether students would cooperate (nor did being on a "law or law enforcement" career track). Students who listened to music that explicitly condemns snitching were less likely to cooperate with police — but claimed that their music had no effect on their attitudes.

Last Friday afternoon, Frei, a few of his colleagues, and two students who worked on the Project gathered at Kelliann's, a bar across the street from CCP's main campus. They've been preparing for the college's Law and Society Week, which begins tomorrow; they're making a presentation about their results on Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 1:25 p.m. in the college's Winnet Building. They're also thinking of taking their survey citywide. It seemed like a good time to discuss what they'd learned, and what they still needed to know.

What they'd learned, they agreed, was that the central problem in police-community relations is trust. Many of the students who were reluctant to work with police said they'd been falsely accused of a crime, and in focus groups, people complained that when you do cooperate, it's often for naught. People in many neighborhoods have given up on cops, said Bernard Cook, a 27 year-old paralegal studies major, and now, "you can't get the lid back on."

"Codes of silence are common in many organizations," explained Frei, "including the police." If people view cops as outsiders, they're not likely to be willing to work with them.

When the researchers are asked what the cops can do to improve this situation, though, they balk — this is what they still don't know. Sure, they can tell the cops that people are more willing to help if it "guarantees" a criminal's incarceration. But the cops can't incarcerate someone without witnesses. It's the same old catch-22. The Snitching Project can help explain a problem better, and that's a good thing. But it doesn't mean the solutions become obvious.

(doron@citypaper.net)