TheLoop21.com

By: Devona Walker (Add to your loop)
Mon, 11/02/2009 - 14:17

A man has been arrested in Cleveland for the murder of six Black women.

Six Black women have been found strangled to death in the home of a convicted Cleveland sex offender. Some of the bodies are so decomposed authorities are calling in anthropologists to determine their identities. 

How can something like this happen without anyone calling authorities to check him out? I certainly hope no one, whether it's law enforcement or people in the community, start shouting that "stop snitching" nonsense when looking for an excuse.

It would be easy to paint this as yet another example of how law enforcement neglects to protect people of color. We have done that in the past. Here, here and here. But the black community, too, has some responsibility here.

Local shopkeepers are now telling law enforcement that the perp— convicted sex offender who served 15 years in prison for rape— smelled like dead bodies. Women in the neighborhood said he tried to lure them into his house. It looks like he started killing women shortly after his release. But this time, I suppose he wanted to make sure his victim could not testify against him, so he killed them.

When a young white girl goes missing, an entire community, city and sometimes even the nation is mobilized. When six black women turn up missing, obviously for years, no one bothers asking why? Do we not value our lives as much as they value theirs? Are we not communicating effectively and frequently with law enforcement or the media, advocating for our own safety? Are we not looking out for each other, are we not paying attention to what goes on in our community? Has the black community, once so tightly knit, become so disenfranchised that a mass murderer can live, kill and prey upon us, without anyone notifying authorities? And ultimately whose being harmed by this behavior? 

Stop Snitching.

The worse thing that has happened in the U.S., when it comes to violent crime and communities of color, is this whole "stop snitching" nonsense. Though there has been this ongoing trust issue between communities of color and law enforcement, it's gotten worse in recent years. Some folks say it is directly related to the so-called war on drugs. But its most recent incantation definitely has more to do with a gang-driven code of silence than anything else.

Think about unsolved high-profile murder cases such as Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G. and Jam Master Jay. To this day, no one has stepped up and testified against their murderers. Think about the families of those men who have never received justice. Now, think about how many non-headline-grabbing Black people are killed daily whose families never receive justice. Think about the disparity that exists in homicide clearance rates when the victim is Black. 

The prevailing belief in the Black community is that law enforcement spends less time investigating violent crime when the victim is a person of color but proving it is difficult. In fact, (though I take this research with a grain of salt), it is actually disproven here.

But the larger narrative, becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss, is that the communities themselves are contributing to the disparity. "Stop snitching," they say, hinders their efforts. Whether it's out of fear or lack of trust, Black people are not testifying and standing up against the violence. In larger metropolitan cities, for example, the percentage of violent crimes cleared by law enforcement dropped from 45 percent in the late 90s to less than 35 percent in 2005, according to the FBI. Conviction rates have also dropped.

"There's such animosity toward the police in some urban communities that even people who aren't afraid, and who hate crime, still feel cooperating is something good people don't do," said David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Has mainstream media given too much coverage to the murder of Annie Le?

Yes, way too much

Yes, a little too much

No, the right amount

No, not enough

I don't know