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Listen in

Listen to excerpts of Pittsburghers talking about snitching. In order of their comments:
-- Three men wrestle with the heat as they talk about snitches. They did not want to be identified.
-- Nate Brown, 26, of Homewood, talks about snitching and its affect on young men like him.
-- Michael Turner, 15, of Larimer, says if he sees a crime it's his duty to his community to report it. He calls the stop snitching campaign a plague on Pittsburgh's neighborhoods.
-- K. Chase Patterson, 23, NAACP youth director, says the "Stop Snitching" campaign has instilled a backward set of morals in many communities.
Listen to the comments (9 min., 2 sec.)

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It would take more than a bullet to loosen his lips.

The man with a bullet lodged near the top of his spine was conscious. He even managed to hold a short conversation with Pittsburgh police Lt. Dan Herrmann from his bed in the Mercy Hospital emergency room.

Lt. Herrmann had arrived at the hospital after he and other officers from the Hill District station responded to a call of shots fired on Cherokee Street.

They found no crime scene. They found no victims.

And then, a dispatch over the police radio reported, "A man ... bullet wound to the head ... dropped off at Mercy."

While a conscious shooting victim means police would have a better chance of identifying a suspect, it quickly became apparent this man was sticking by a street code dictating that one does not cooperate with police.

Lying in a hospital bed in danger of dying that day in May, the man cared more about preserving his sense of honor than about helping police track down the person who put him there.

It is a code that has come to be known as "Stop Snitching."

"He told me he took a bus" to the hospital, Lt. Herrmann recalled. Later, the story changed to a car. And finally to a jitney.

"He didn't see anything or know anything," Lt. Herrmann said. "Nobody had to get him on the bandwagon to 'Stop Snitching.' "

What was once known as a gangster's code has become the code of conduct for people in communities racked by gun violence and poverty. Somewhere along the line, an oath among criminals to never speak with or become a turncoat for prosecutors became a guideline for all community members.

Residents, activists and leaders from some of Pittsburgh's most troubled neighborhoods have mixed definitions and messages when it comes to the subject of snitching.

Is it snitching if you simply relay to police what you saw at a crime scene? Is it snitching to leave an anonymous police tip? Is it snitching to participate in a block watch?

What is clear is that "Stop Snitching" has affected police trying to solve crimes, and it has affected community members by frightening them into silence or leading them to believe that it's honorable to remain silent.

Community leaders say they understand why people fear the consequences of talking more than the consequences of not talking -- the words of the code are both exhortation and threat.

"If I see somebody who's murdered, I have a moral responsibility to communicate that to the authorities," said K. Chase Patterson, youth director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "Not only has [Stop Snitching] criminalized our communities, but it is also has a stronghold on our community.

"It places grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles and parents in constant fear. It is not a code that everyone has to respect. But the fear aspect has made it a code that everyone does respect."

Mr. Patterson said he was in line at a restaurant in Homewood when he overheard a conversation that described in detail the shooter, the victim and the sequence of events in a recent homicide. The people in line would never approach a police officer with that information, he said.

"Not snitching is about protecting your neighborhood, your living," said a man sitting outside a barbershop in East Liberty recently. He declined to be identified.

"You can't tell somebody not to do a crime or not to do a robbery or not to sell drugs or whatever. I don't know whose kids he has to feed. That's his responsibility. But if I live here, like right here, I'm not going to let some [expletive] set up to sell drugs right here."

Some people are afraid to step up for other reasons, said Nate Brown, 26, of Homewood:

"The people who do stand up and cooperate with the legal system turn around and they aren't even protected by the legal system that helped them catch the criminal."