Stop Pleading

The power of the tongue is life and death.

– Clipse, “There Was a Murder”

Stop Snitching. Call it a movement, call it a criminal conspiracy, call it a gimmick to sell crap cd/dvds & tshirts. For those who’ve slept, and for my own enjoyment of the art form, I offer a brief compendium of definitions:

“stop snitching” (stop  snich-ing)  | slang

1. “never let shit about G’s leave your mouth.” [Wayne, 2007]
2. “the hustler’s dedicate”:  “rather hung yourself than turn state’s evidence.” See also “Mum’s the word” [Clipse, 2009]
3. “don’t tattletale, the number one ruley” [Mac Dre, ] [RIP]
4. “when you get shot up, please don’t rat, don’t tell on that man, go shoot his ass back.” [Uncle Murda, 2009]
5. “stop talking to the cops.” [the Game, 2006]

If Stop Snitching is a code, it is also an explicit threat of violence against police informants. My favorite example being Uncle Murda: If you snitch, he’ll kill your mother, your grandmother, and your great-grandmother. (He’ll kill them!) He will rap with his boys next to your corpse. (You’re dead!). Lil Wayne (less convincingly) offers his Automatic to the cause; Clipse  – in a rather weary tone – seem resigned to the objective fact that There Will Be a Murder in the event of a snitching. Other rappers (who will go unnamed here because I don’t think they’re terribly good)  get a lot more personal with their snitch-murder fantasies. And in a particularly lame development, the storied tradition of rap beef has of late been reduced to calling other rappers Snitches, and telling them to Stop. (see generally, Cam’ron –  prepare for yawning).

Predictably, there’s been a lot of critics of this phenomenon: folks who have been victims of crime or are vulnerable to it, law & order types, right wing pundits, and – surprise – law enforcement.

Defenders of Stop Snitching have offered forth a number of defenses in return: the doctrine has a softer, philosophical side  (“If a man talk about another man while that man ain’t present, a man don’t listen/ They throwin brick but they hands is missin” – L.W.); the code only applies to those already involved in the criminal enterprise. (“Don’t do that crime / if  you can’t do that that time / I’m serious: be true to yourself dawg / you ain’t got to be a thug dawg/ do something else dawg.” – Uncle M); The rule only restates common codes of loyalty between friends.. (“Yo own people could be them people / No glasses can help you see them people / They around too many evil people” – L.W.)

There’s also a political defense of the Stop Snitching movement. One particularly fun iteration of this by Immortal Technique was recently published in XXL :

If the police want people to start speaking to authorities, maybe they should start speaking to authorities. They want people to take the stand? Maybe they should walk around the blue wall of silence and take the stand themselves … I’ve never seen an officer take the stand against another one and be like, Yeah, your honor, I saw my partner bash that kid’s head in ’cause he was Black and had an attitude. I’ve never heard one of them say, No, we had no reason to stop them. We just do that all the time on the highway in Jersey and hope we get lucky.

And what about the government? You [ever] heard the Feds snitch on each other with it resulting in shit? What about the CIA? They kill snitches. Who ever heard Col. Oliver North—who was funneling drug money and weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua—snitch on Reagan? Fuck outta here, nigga. You never heard of anything like that. You want us to snitch? You snitch, muthafucka. You want crimes solved? So do we. You want truth? Guess what? We do too. Malcolm X. Martin Luther King Jr. Tupac. Biggie. Agent 800. Gulf War Syndrome. Cancer clusters in the ’hood. JFK. 9/11. Anthrax. The circumstances behind the War in Iraq. The funding of the Taliban by America up to five months before Sept. 11, 2001. Start there. We should start a “Start Snitching” campaign for the government to come to terms with what they’ve done to us before we point the finger at another brother.

Much as I’d like to be totes sympathetic to this inflammatory morsel, I can’t really get behind the main premise that one Justice necessarily precedes another, which is to say, I’m not sure that the hypocrisy of Stop Snitching’s gov’t detractors is really enough to justify a standstill of law enforcement in the country writ large. But I sense that Tech is also making a structural argument that snitching contributes to the existing inequity of the criminal justice system … and so any government rat is also circumstantially a traitor of his people.

N- can’t you see?
Sometimes your words incarcerate me…
Can’t say shit, that’s basic – they wanna send a N- back to the slave ship

– Ice Cube, “Stop Snitching

They want Latinos and Blacks to snitch on each other? They want the ’hood to snitch on itself? I spent an extra six months locked up and a month in the hole over saying nothing to the police, even after my co-defendant sang like a fuckin’ canary…I take that snitching shit personally. They didn’t break me or make me talk. I wasn’t for sale. And I don’t think that our loyalty as a people should be either.

– Immortal Technique

On the real, it’s not like rappers are the only people noticing the perverse criminal justice implications of snitching. The Innocence Project identifies Snitches as one of their six primary causes of false convictions. According to their data, 15% of folks exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence were convicted using snitch testimony. A study by Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions found that snitches are responsible for 46% of wrongful capital convictions from false testimony. According to my data, 100% of the 3 individuals (not exactly statistically significant, I concede) I know of that were wrongly convicted and exonerated were convicted on the basis of snitch testimony (and one involved some super-shady police hypnosis…).The Canadian government’s also done some studies, but we’re in Uh-Murk-a here, and we don’t mess with Canada, Drake or no Drake. (JK it’s on the Innocence Project website).

A civilized and free society would not be discussing, much less seriously debating, any proposal to enlist private citizens to act as federal neighborhood snitches.

– Rep. Ron Paul

Where the Stop Snitching campaign fails, though, is the limited reach of its vision. A system where snitching works is, according to its rhetoric, a failure of manhood, a proliferation of fake hustlers, a moral disintegration in the brotherhood of thug. It does not contemplate that a system of snitching is a system that gives prosecutors unbridled power to decide whether an individual gets let off the hook or has the book thrown at him; not to mention the skewing of our sentencing laws such that the book that gets thrown is crazy heavy. Or, to use the ever pithy words of Public Broadcasting, Stop Snitching does not contemplate how the “fundamental shift in the country’s anti-drug laws — including federal mandatory minimum sentencing and conspiracy provisions–has bred a culture of snitching that is in many cases rewarding the guiltiest and punishing the less guilty.”

In other words, Stop Snitching is almost Republican in the individualism of its ethos, which comes at the expense of a robust structural account of things. Which honestly, in unsurprising, given how much of the hustler / don / rap mogul narrative runs parallel to the bootstraps American Dream narrative.

Stat: 97% of convictions occurring within a year of arrest were obtained through a plea. About 9 in 10 of those pleas were to a felony. In other words, everything gets settled out of court, sans jury. So why are the anti-snitching songbirds so concerned with the ability of informants to “turn state’s evidence” when such a tiny tiny margin of criminal convictions actually go to trial? Isn’t the real problem pleading? Is it that rappers and Youtube video producers and Tshirt manufacturers compose the entirety of the 3% of individuals who turn down the plea, actually go to trial on their charges, and are subsequently convicted on the basis of snitch testimony? Or is it, as I prefer to think, simply that the movement got wrapped up in its own macho bluster, and got tagged with a misnomer that’s snowballed?

If you out there thuggin in the streets, doin’ what you do,
And you get jammed up
Don’t give up your mans in the muthafucka
Try to cut a CO or something when you in jail – Start a revolution
Don’t be no muthafuckin snitch; Don’t do the police job!

– Uncle Murda, “Please Don’t Snitch”

Why not a Stop Pleading movement instead?  Without it we’re left in the odd situation where it’s unacceptable to take a light plea in exchange for snitching on someone else, but totally kosher to snitch on yourself for the same. Imagine a world without pleading. Cops would actually need probable cause to hold someone. Prosecutors would have to actually prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. The machinery of criminal justice wouldn’t be able to function by repeatedly targeting the same community. Biggie AND his woman would be in prison. Prisons would be crazy overcrowded. The system would be overloaded. Folks in power would have to start talking about revamping the laws to cut down on incarcerating nonviolent offenders. What if everyone Stopped Pleading for a year? Like a 12 day labor strike, but for criminal, rather than economic justice.  Shit, if I had the cred and I felt ok about telling the world to man up and do the time,  sick grandma in the hospital and kids to feed irregardless, I’d seriously propose it.  I think it’s a more workable revolution, at least, than cutting a CO…

keep reading.

Ruler Father Ruler Allah (RFRA)

Ya’ll know about the Five Percenters. Their ranks include such prominent voices as Rakim (Allah), Big Daddy Kane, and of course of course, the Wu. One could start a blog entirely devoted to tracking references to the Nation of Gods and Earths, and without even consulting Dr. Google, I can confidentally say that that blog exists. (If you’d rather read words than auditorily receive the Word, there are books on the topic.)

Hiphop tells us that the Nation of Gods has a God (the original Blackman, Clarence13X, Ghostface, and you):

“Yo God, wattup God, it’s the God, God, word is bond”
– Wu Tang, 7th Chamber

That it has religious texts:

And, um, a flag:

(see video, @ 1:34)

[For a long discussion of the basic tenets, practices, and language of the NGE, according to the testimony of several Five Percenter prison inmates, you might consider taking a look at  Self-Allah v. Annucci (W.D.N.Y. 1999). Or you might consult wikipedia, which the federal district court in Talbert v. Mullins cited to for its definition.]

Nonetheless, it’s not clear that legally speaking, at least, the Five Percenter way is considered a religion, for freedom of religious exercise purposes. In William Henry Harrison AKA God Kundalini Isa Allah v. Watts (E.D. Va. 2009), for example, the court held that the Nation of Gods and Earths does not represent a religion, but a “culture and way of life.” Holley v. Johnson (W.D. Va. 2009) documents a Five Percenter inmate’s appeal to be placed on a religious diet due to his religious beliefs. His application was denied with the explanation that the “God of Earth is not a religion.” Similarly, the court in Hudson v. Jabe (E.D.Va. 2008) stated that it was “unclear” whether NGE “is a group or organization that is religious in nature,” despite the plaintiff’s identification of the group as a “well recognized Islamic based community.”

Part of the conflict is that law enforcement and prison officials have designated the NGE as a gang. See Fowlkes v. Rodriguez (E.D.N.Y. 2008) (noting that NGE was “characterized as a religious group by the plaintiff, but apparently viewed as a gang by law enforcement”). As a result, a variety of prison systems have instituted “zero tolerance” policies banning practices related to NGE or even possession of Five Percenter Materials.  Policies instituted agaisnt Five Percenters include:

• prohibition of Five Percenter materials/literature and correspondence; confiscation of them as “contraband” see, e.g. Cartwright v. Meade (W.D. Va. 2008), Johnson v. Stewart (W.D.Mich. 2008) (confiscating “The Breakdown to The Universal Flag of The Nation of Gods and Earths” and an African Studies packet)
• upon discovery of Five Percenter affiliation, designation as a “gang member” and placement in high security custody,  Cabbagestalk v. Ozmint (D.S.C. 2007); Filiut v. Applegate (E.D.Mich.2006), or seg/solitary Talbert v. Jabe (W.D.Va. 2007)
• policy of making inmates sign “renouncement” affidavits stating that they no longer believe in NGE in order to be removed from restricted housing. Cromer v. Chaney (W.D.Mich. 2009)
• denied a vegetarian diet or the “Common Fare” upon request, because such meals are only given for “religious” purposes. Cromer v. Chaney (W.D.Mich. 2009)
• punishment for “speaking in code” when using the Supreme Alphabet; 5% lingo. See Harrison v. Lindsay (M.D.Pa. 2008) (plaintiff argued that his good time should be restored and he should not have been disciplined, stating: “I was not speaking in code. That is the language of my people. I am a Nation of Gods and Earth, the five (5%) percenter.”

As a result of the insistence of prison officials that NGE is a violent gang, the vast majority of courts have held that there is no free religious exercise right being infringed either under the First Amendment or statutes like RLUIPA and RFRA. The banning of Five Percenter materials, language, and affiliation is largely found to be “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” See, e.g., Fraise v. Terhune (3d Cir.2002) (upholding a ban on Five Percenter newspapers where inmates could possess, study, and discuss the Bible and the Koran); Brown v. D.O.C. PA (3d Cir.2008) (same, granting summary judgment for defendants under First Amendment and RLUIPA); Harbin-Bey v. Rutter (6th Cir.2005) (confiscation of inmate’s Five Percenter-related mail did not violate inmate plaintiff’s constitutional rights); Johnson v. Stewart (W.D.Mich. March 26, 2008) (confiscation of Five Percenter literature did not violate First Amendment); Talbert v. Jabe (W.D .Va. November 8, 2007) (confiscation of Five Percenters-related mail did not violate First Amendment or RLUIPA); Bells v. Ozmint (D. S.C. June 6, 2007) (confiscation of Five Percenters-related material did not violate First Amendment or RLUIPA); Cooper v. Starling (E.D.N.C. January 8, 2003) (confiscation of 5%er medallion not violative of plaintiff’s constitutional rights).

Notably, this view of adherents to religions um. . . outside of the mainstream . . . is kind of restricted to the NGE. Compare Fraise v. Terhune (3d Cir.2002)(upholding prohibition of The 120 Degrees, Supreme Mathematics, and Supreme Alphabet – not a violation of First Amendment) with Sutton v. Rasheed, 323 F.3d 236 (3d Cir. 2003) (denying Nation of Islam adherents the writings of Elijah Muhammad and the writings of Farrakhan was a violation of the First Amendment.)

So what are they? Gang or religion? I’ll present the best case for both from the legal literature:

The Five Percent Nation claims that it does not promote or advocate violence, but evidence links the group with numerous incidents of prison violence. Indeed . . . many in the law enforcement community consider the Five Percent Nation to be “one of the greatest threats to the social fabric” of the prisons. In August 1990, a Five Percenter was a member of a small group of inmates who repeatedly stabbed a prison officer and severely beat other officers. In May 1993, an investigation revealed that a Five Percenter sent an anonymous letter threatening the lives of prison staff at East Jersey State Prison.In December 1993, more than 30 inmates at Northern State Prison participated in a group demonstration in the gymnasium during afternoon recess. See id. A subsequent investigation revealed that the group was planning to assault prison staff because prison officials refused to recognize the Five Percent Nation as a religion. Information was also received that the Five Percenters were planning to “take a cop” in the afternoon. In March 1995, two Five Percenters in the Southern State Correctional Facility were involved in an altercation inside a housing unit. See id. at 342. On a day in November 1996, 24 inmates in a youth correctional facility who were affiliated with the Five Percent Nation or rival Hispanic gangs were involved in three separate incidents. In July 1997, Five Percenters at Middlesex County Jail participated in a hunger strike.  Officers were required to use smoke and concussion grenades to enter two barricaded housing units.

– Fraise v. Terhune (3d Cir.2002)

Maurice Samuels is currently an inmate at the Sullivan Correctional Facility. Since being incarcerated, Samuels has taken a keen interest in religion. He identifies himself as a member of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths. While confined at Sing Sing, he received a degree of Master of Professional Studies in Prison Ministry through the New York Theological Seminary (“NYTS”). Upon completion of his studies with the NYTS, Samuels was transferred to the Green Haven Correctional Facility.  At Green Haven, Samuels was assigned a clerk’s position in therapeutic “Reality and Pain Program.” He subsequently redesigned the program, creating the “Reality and Pain Therapeutic Counseling Program.” During this period he also served as a volunteer inmate instructor in the Black Studies program, and was later assigned as a clerk in Green Haven’s Senior Counselor’s Office, where he helped create a program for sex offenders. The website of the University of Chicago’s Divinity School provides a good summary of the beliefs of the adherents of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths, commonly known as the “Five Percenters.”See Jonathan Moore, The Five Percenters: Racist Prison Gang or Persecuted Religion?, SIGHTINGS, May 21, 1999. The name of the group stems from its belief that only five percent of people are aware of and teach the truth. The term “Gods” refers to black male members; “Earths” refer to black female members. The group was founded by Clarence 13X, who left the Nation of Islam in 1964. According to Moore, “[m]any of the theological accoutrements of Black Muslim belief remain: many read the Qur’an and Elijah Muhammad’s writings (especially his “Message to the Black Man”), and they hold to the exclusive divinity of black men.” Id. (The Moore article, not part of the record, is provided for background purposes only). Samuels has included two pages outlining the differences between the Nation of Gods and Earths and similar black Muslim groups-the Nation of Islam and the Temple of Islam.

– Samuels v. Selsky (S.D.N.Y.,2002)

My inclination is to say: why can’t it be both? It’s not like any other religious group doesn’t have more unpalatable elements along with more sympathetic figures. Framed legally, why does it matter? Religious rights in prisons are restricted enough, and there isn’t anything particularly burdensome about assessing case-by-case a religious practice to see if it would create a security risk. Certainly, I don’t see any legitimate penological interest in denying a vegetarian meal or the supreme mathematics, even if the conservative side of me understands why using the supreme alphabet in a monitored telephone call might run against security interests.

I’ll end by saying that I was only really able to find one case squarely acknowledging the Nation of Gods and Earths as a religion, Marria v. Broaddus (SDNY 2002). Notably, while most of the cases straight dismissing the idea that Five Percenters might have religious beliefs come from Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, this case (which includes a penological expert’s report arguing Supremes in prison would not hurt security along with the application of what I consider the correct legal standard) was decided in the Southern District of New York. Shaolin! Stand up!

Keep reading.

X-Post

mi an Jim stan-up
waitin pan a bus,
nat cauzin no fus,
wen all af a sudden
a police van pull-up…

– “Sonny’s Lettah,”Mi Revalueshanery Fren

Hydra Magazine‘s got a pretty tight piece on the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson: “Police brutality, after N.W.A., is a perhaps trope too familiar to the ear. We must defamiliarize ourselves from it to hear the how the poem is, as Johnson says, ‘a cultural weapon.’”

Battle Rap, Dissenting

Folks at HipHopLaw.com brought my attention to two pertinent academic events that happened recently:

1. At this year’s LatCrit Theory conference, a panel of law professors (a legal academic cypher, if you will) presented on  “The Hip Hop Movement at the Intersection of Race, Class and Culture: Hip Hop Music’s Effect on the Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness.”  Papers produced for the panel include:
   “From Habermas to ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’: Hip Hop, The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Black Public Sphere.”
   “Thug Life: Hip Hop’s Tricky Impact on Criminal Punishment and Corporate Exploitation.”
2. There was also this crazy Swiss conference on the “Intersections of Law and Culture” that included a panel entitled “Law and Pop Culture.” Papers rolled:
   “Thug Life: Hip Hop’s Curious Relationship with Criminal Justice.”
   “The Legal and Social Concept of ‘Color Blindness’ in the United States and France.”

I’m not trying to hate on my honorable brethren, who far succeed me in qualifications, but I’d like to respectfully dissent from the approach they take on hip hop law:  focusing on what the law has to say about hiphop and hiphop’s effects on society.

First off, the law’s got too much to say about hiphop, communities of color, and artistic expression as it is, imho. Second off, there’s nothing particularly new or challenging about viewing hiphop from the lens of the establishment. It’s overdone even for the purpose of disapproving of the law’s approach, but it’s especially annoying when the law is brandished as a demonstration of “mainstream norms” to be compared to “hiphop norms.” Which brings me to point three: approaching the subject from this POV has a dangerous tendency to turn into this inane nonsense:

Ok, with a little distance, the absurdity is kind of awesome. But seriously, 1+ clips, and I want to gouge my eyes out.

(sidebar: see0:48 for a reference pertinent to my previous post, re: Snoop’s female lawyer “riding for her pimp”)

To be fair, between the awful America-hurting-screaming (“Why should Snoop Doggy Dogg be in prison?” “Because he’s a wise guy!” “You’ve obviously never met him.”), there are a few interesting legal bones to pick: Possession vs. distribution laws; the Second Amendment; civil consequences of felony convictions. But if I’m to give a soundbyte, it will be simply this:  it is a far more interesting exercise, at least for me, to examine what hiphop has to say about the law and the law’s effects on society than the other way around.

Down

Thanks to to Lil Kim and them / you know the women friend
Who carry the work cross state / for a gentlemen

– Jay-Z, “Roc Boys”

Of course, the thing about carrying work cross state for your gentleman is that it becomes a crime that occurs in interstate commerce, which is to say a Federal Offense. Which might explain the coincidence of the Drug War with the dramatic increase in the number of “women friends” in federal penitentiaries. To put it to a count:

• Between 1979 and 1993, there was a a 2200% increase in the number of women incarcerated in federal prisons.
• 68% of all female federal prisoners in 1993 were drug law violators, compared to 20% in 1979.

It’s actually pretty striking how specific rap references to the women who deal for their men are with respect to the federal nature of these offenses. Bitches play mule in the riskiest, most border-crossing of circumstances – on Amtrak (B.I.G.: “I got my honey on the Amtrak with the crack  / in the crack of her ass“); on airplanes (The Game: “Where you at? It ain’t a problem to get it there by tomorrow/ ’cause I got a female friend with frequent flyer mileage”); in airports (Jay-Z: “Destined for greatness / and y’all knew this since I doubled the pie / Had shorty in the girdle comin’ outta BWI“) (referencing Baltimore Washington International Airport).

While the effects of drug crimes of the Amtrak variety are particularly dramatic, state prisons have not escaped this trend either:

• 40% of all female state prisoners in 1992 were drug law violators, compared to 11% in 1979.
• Between 1986 and 1991, there was an 828% increase in the number of black women incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses, according to the Bureau of Justice.

Blow sellin / dough amounts to no tellin
… cause I handle your dealings / keep your name intact
… cause I’m your bitch, the Bonnie to your Clyde

– Ja Rule, feat. Charli Baltimore, “Down Ass Bitch”

***

“My bitch swear to God she won’t snitch…”

– B.I.G., “Everyday Struggle”

Wrapped up in this whole idea of a “down bitch” is a more insidious version of the whole “Stop Snitching” business. Whereas snitching is forbidden to men because it would be a violation of a social contract or an honor code (or depending on the song, potentially a death sentence) — for women, the refusal to snitch is a profession of Love, an indication of a committed relationship, a sign of a woman’s worth vis-a-vis the male population (or maybe just one particular male).

I told her when she hit the bricks  / I’ll make the hooker rich
Conspiracy / she’ll be home in three

– B.I.G., “Everyday Struggle”

At least Biggie’s frank about the consequences of this sacrifice: more often than not, a woman’s refusal to snitch on her drug-trafficking boyfriend as part of a plea bargain leads to the prosecution of conspiracy charges against her — while BF gets off free.  See aforementioned Ja/Charli video, at 2:36, for a dramatic reenactment

Bringing us full circle, Lil’ Kim herself was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for refusing to “snitch.”

Fair? What do you think? As of 2004, a larger percentage of women in state prisons are doing time for drug crimes than men. (31% vs. 21%).

To all the girls I bought a girdle to conceal my bricks,
no doubt they can vouch my life is real as shit.

-Jay-Z, “Feelin It”

Conspiracy / she’ll be home in three
Until then I looks out for the whole family / A true G that’s me
Blowing like a bubble / In the everyday struggle

– B.I.G., “Everyday Struggle”

Whose struggle? Who’s the True G? And how does Jay get off saying that the women who absorb all his risk can vouch for his “real”-ness? I’m not saying the Drug War hasn’t had its effects on men, but I am far from the only one who has said that the War on Drugs is a War on Women. With that in mind, it’s a little crude for Big and Jay to be congratulating themselves without giving real credit to where credit is due, or, in Biggie’s case, waving off three years of prison time like it ain’t no thing. These boys are playing like the Watson and Crick of the dope game, leaving their Rosalind’s at the mercy of federal prosecutors and Rockefeller laws, when even they would admit (in the words of Ja) that “every thug needs a lady.” Now how “real” is that?

***

Further reading:

Julia Sudbury, Black Women in the Global Prison Industrial Complex, Feminist Review (2002) (“My mother got twelve years. She’s in Foston Hall. They can give people those long sentences just for knowing drugs are in the house. He sentenced her to 12 years for knowing. She wasn’t even involved and he knew that. But he said she knew it was in the country and if had got through, she would have benefited from it, from any money…”)

Angela Wolf, et. al, The Incarceration of Women in California, University of San Francisco Law Review (2008)

Ruthie Gilmore, Golden Gulag, Voices from the Frontlines Radio (2004)

Guerillas in the Mist (Cop Killer Pt. II)

Right about now NWA court is in full effect.
Judge Dre presiding in the case of NWA versus the police department.
Prosecuting attorneys are MC Ren, Ice Cube, and Eazy muthafuckin E.
Order order order. Ice Cube take the muthafuckin stand.
Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothin but the truth so help your black ass?
– N.W.A., “Fuck the Police”

Prosecutors Ren, Cube, and E (like their compatriot T),  are not shy about pointing to police brutality as the root of their rage: whether that brutality entails being maced, beat or “slammed to the street top” — by either a white cop, or a black cop. What the conceit of NWA’s “Fuck the Police” also calls attention to, however,  is that this condemnation is not limited to the much-reviled po’, but in fact the entire legal establishment. A minority-killing police does not just kill minorities; he feels that he has the authority to kill a minority.

Readin my rights and shit, it’s all junk
Pullin out a silly club, so you stand / With a fake assed badge and a gun in your hand

Here, Cube sneers at the purported legal authority bestowed upon law enforcement officials by the “badge and gun.” At the same time he scoffs at the efficacy of Miranda rights, that much-valorized trophy of civil rights lawyers.

(For the nonlegal among us, the origin of being “read your rights” is the Supreme Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966), in which the court held that a defendant’s statements are only admissible at trial if the s/he was informed of the right to an attorney; to remain silent, etc. Notably, the case came as a response to brutal police interrogation tactics resulting in coerced confessions/testimony).

NWA is apparently so disillusioned with the legal protections of the criminal justice system that it institutes its own court. The court is far from traditional — it strays far from legal ethics rules that would require Judge Dre to recuse himself, for example; the prosecutors are also witnesses; and from the sound of things, it’s clearly rowdy in this imaginary courtroom. Yet despite its procedural roughness, it has more legitimacy than the courts of the great state of California, or even the United States of America: it purports to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

FUCK THE POLICE, for Darryl Gates.
FUCK THE POLICE, for Rodney King.
FUCK THE POLICE, for my dead homies.
FUCK THE POLICE, for your freedom.
…
COP KILLER, but tonight we get even

– Ice T/ Body Count, “Cop Killer”

The truth, for example, that the Rodney King case failed to demonstrate. Now if you’re like me, you grew up with footage of the Rodney King beating, and the subsequent [choose your own adventure: (pg 1) riot | (pg 3) uprising]. But to recap:

• 

  After a highspeed car chase, LAPD order King out of his car, shoot him with taser, and beat him repeatedly with batons.

• Bystander videotapes it; shows tape to police; is ignored —————->
• LA district attorney charges LAPD officers with use of excessive force.
• California Court of Appeals removes the Los Angeles judge in charge of the case for “bias.”
• The new judge moves the trial from Los Angeles to Simi Valley,  a conservative and predominantly white city in Ventura County.
• Change of venue changes the jury pool. The King jury ultimately consists of Ventura County residents — ten whites, one Latino, and one Asian.
• Jury acquits.

Lets be clear, Rodney King is a synechdoche of the failure of LA’s legal institutions to grapple with  police brutality, not an outlier case. Another excellent example of why some folks might think that Judge Dre would be a better choice than the federal or state judiciary is Lyons v. City of Los Angeles, excerpted below:

The complaint alleged that, on October 6, 1976, at 2 a.m., [plaintiff Adolph] Lyons was stopped by the defendant officers for a traffic or vehicle code violation, and that, although Lyons offered no resistance or threat whatsoever, the officers, without provocation or justification, seized Lyons and applied a “chokehold” — either the “bar arm control” hold or the “carotid-artery control” hold or both — rendering him unconscious and causing damage to his larynx. [Lyon] alleged that the City’s police officers, “pursuant to the authorization, instruction and encouragement of Defendant City of Los Angeles, regularly and routinely apply these choke holds in innumerable situations where they are not threatened by the use of any deadly force whatsoever,” that numerous persons have been injured as the result of the application of the chokeholds, that Lyons and others similarly situated are threatened with irreparable injury in the form of bodily injury and loss of life, and that Lyons “justifiably fears that any contact he has with Los Angeles Police officers may result in his being choked and strangled to death without provocation, justification or other legal excuse.”

Originally, Lyons’ complaint alleged that at least two deaths had occurred as a result of the application of chokeholds by the police. His first amended complaint alleged that 10 chokehold-related deaths had occurred. By May, 1982, there had been five more such deaths.

So then the LAPD loses its lawsuit, and has to change its policy of choking people until they pass out for no reason, right?
Wrong. The Supremest Court of this country threw out Lyon’s plea for a policy change because “it is surely no more than speculation to assert either that Lyons himself will again be involved in one of those unfortunate instances.”

To its credit, four members of the court dissented. And furthermore, they start their dissenting opinion: “Respondent Adolph Lyons is a 24-year-old Negro male who resides in Los Angeles.” The dissenters continue: “In a city where Negro males constitute 9% of the population, they have accounted for 75% of the deaths resulting from the use of chokeholds. Since 1975, no less than 16 persons have died following the use of a chokehold. Twelve have been Negro males.” In other words, “Yo Court, dude is black and lives in LA. It’s a lot more than speculation that the police will be hassling this guy again. Haven’t you been listening to NWA?”

So yes. Fuck the police for Rodney King. Also Adolph Lyons. But who’s this Darryl Gates fella?

O, Darryl Gates. Did you know you were going to be a rap music icon when you started that whole “Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums” business?

April 29th was power to the people/ and we might just see a sequel
cause police got equal pay / A horse is a pig that don`t fly straight
Doin Darryl Gates/ but is Willie Williams
Down with the pilgrims?/ Just a super slave
…
Gorilla straight from the mist / But I don’t miss when it comes to this
–  Ice Cube, “Wicked”

“Gorilla straight from the mist” being a reference to a comment turned up during the course of the Rodney King trial: one of the police officers most involved in King’s beating had come upon a domestic disturbance involving some Black folks shortly prior to the whole King incident, and described it as a scene right out of “Gorillas in the Mist” — the documentary starring, well, gorillas. Which is to say, hella fuckin’ racist. Ice Cube’s reclamation of it, though, hearkens back to the point I made in my previous post (BEARJEW).

Darryl Gates got the studio surrounded
Cause he don’t like the niggaz that I’m down with
Motherfucker wanna do us
Cause I like Nat, Huey, Malcolm, and Louis
–  Ice Cube, “When Will They Shoot”

One more!

Lettin’ off a hundred rounds / Let the barrel pick
And we gon’ sit here / Wait for the Darryl Gates
– Rick Ross, “One Blood (Dirty South Remix)”

***

Further reading on the topic, because we endeavor to deserve the Law in HipHlawg:

Punishment, Deterrence and Social Control: The Paradox of Punishment in Minority Communities
by Jeffrey Fagan and Tracey Meares,  in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (2008)

Abstract: … High rates of punishment produce “stigma saturation” where punishment loses its contingent value that lends credibility to its claims of fairness and proportionality. As the social and cultural distance between the punishers and the punished widens, respect for the legitimacy of punishment suffers. Dissatisfaction with both procedural and distributive justice can motivate legal cynicism and noncompliance, and these processes are intensified in contexts of weak social control and high legal control.

As legal control replaces informal social control, the state’s role in socialization and the fostering of moral communities diminishes. The devolving of the public sector involvement in socialization further moots the reintegrative functions of punishment. This restructuring and devaluation of government, accompanied by the restructuring and fragmentation of economic activity in poor communities, complicates the achievement of a social consensus on the rationale of punishment in a broader context of social control, and limits the efficacy of informal processes of social regulation.

***

The jury has found you guilty of bein a redneck,
whitebread, chickenshit muthafucka.
“Wait, that’s a lie. That’s a goddamn lie.
I want justice! I want justice!”

Cop Killer (Pt. I)

The debate about whether rap music glorifies violence or provides reflection on violent realities is a discussion that raged and exhausted itself in the 90’s. It’s not my intention to rehash that tired argument (although in the interests of full disclosure, I should state my opinion that Ice T’s music-making is not really on par with slavery or Nazis, contrary to the assertions of one Mizz Tipper Gore).

I’m singing in the first person as a character who is fed up with police brutality.
I ain’t never killed no cop. I felt like it a lot of times…
– Ice T

Volume II of this series of will talk about police brutality, that favorite theme of Cop-Killing anthems. But let’s zone in on the violence a little more. The aforepasted quote by Ice T made me think of another cultural product that’s received rave reviews, at the same time that it has been described thusly:

• “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a revenge fantasy so willfully messed up, sometimes offensively so . . . Surrounded by a fair amount of sadism—most of it played for cheap, lingering thrills.”
• “It’s an unabashed wet dream of vengeance.”
• Its “structure pretty much comes down to scenes of people talking followed by paroxysms of brutal violence . . . a lurid wish fulfillment fantasy of revenge and carnage.”
• Characterized by “enthusiasm for adolescent scenarios and over-reliance on violence.”
• “Obsess[ed] with music and bloody, ritualized violence”

I stress that these are quotes from positive reviews of Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s latest. They’re all fun reads — watching movie reviewers squirm under moral dilemmas is itself sort of a sadistic exercise. And although none of them are terribly illuminating, they do bring up an angle on ultraviolence that I don’t remember being discussed in those heated 90s battles between Ms. Cultural Terrorist and Mr. T(racy Marrow): the potential cultural-societal value of revenge fantasy, particularly fantasies from the viewpoint of an oppressed and emasculated minority.

Its not a stretch to think that individuals like Charlton Heston, for example (who we should note is himself a virulent supporter of owning guns) might be so offended by these songs not because they are murder wish fulfillment songs, but because there’s an implied threat against Him in them.

Whites watch out, we are going to kill you … slowly/ we will kill you with our machine guns.
– South African freedom song, as discussed in Amandla!

“Whites watch out, we are going to kill you … slowly” even as a quotation from the past is still shocking, vicious, racist, barbaric, uncalled for, and damaging. Living in southern Africa as an elderly white male is stressful enough…
– letter to the editor, Sunday Times
(in response to a review of Amandla!)

My favorite of that list is “uncalled for.”  If you’re going to criticize a song advocating violence against the apartheid majority, I don’t think “uncalled for” is the phrase you should really be reaching for. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s pretty reasonable to be uncomfortable with supporting murder-torture-revenge fantasy, but in the same way that Inglourious Basterds has been hailed as an empowering cultural consumption experience that may have the ability to preclude the impulse towards unnecessary violence, giving the Ballads of Cop-Killing their due may require us to similarly weigh the potential for a healthy purge in their case. To be fair: even if this vengeful aesthetic of barbarity does serve a cathartic purpose, it’s still pornographic. But to be fairer: let he who has not watched porn cast the first stone.

“I ain’t never killed no cop. I felt like it a lot of times. But I never did it.” He’s not a cop (killer) — he just plays one on TV. But what if he had? The California Penal Code, which governs the grand old land of the CPT and the LAPD alike, differentiates between killing cops and killing reg’lar folks. In lieu of a neat wrap-up, we’ll leave it, as last time, with some sentencing law:

Cop Killer – Ice T & Body Count (1992)

I got my headlights turned off / I got my twelve gauge sawed off
I’m ’bout to bust some shots off / I’m about to dust some cops off

Compare Assault with a firearm: imprisonment in the state prison for 2, 3, or 4 years or in a county jail for not less than 6 months and not exceeding 1 year, or by both a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000) and imprisonment.
with Assault with a firearm against a police officer: imprisonment in the state prison for 4, 6, or 8 years

I got my brain on hype / Tonight’ll be your night
I got this long-assed knife/ and your neck looks just right

Compare Assault with a deadly weapon:  two, three, or four years in the state prison, or in a county jail for not exceeding one year, or by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by both the fine and imprisonment,
with Assault with a deadly weapon against a police officer: imprisonment in the state prison for three, four, or five years.

what do you wanna be when you grow up? / cop killer / good choice

Compare Second Degree Murder: 15 years to life. ( §190, subd. (a)),
with Second Degree Murder of Police Officer: 25 years-to-life. (§190, subd. (b)), or life without parole (§190, subd. (c))

Compare First Degree Murder: 25 to life, life without parole, or death. (§190)
with First Degree Murder of a Police Officer or Federal Agent: death. (§190.2 (a)(7)-(8))
with First Degree Murder that is a Hate Crime: life without parole. (§190.03)

****

Yea, I know, Cop Killer is more hardcore than rap. But it’s hardcore I confessedly rather like, and it’s not like Charleton Heston really knows the difference. But in conciliation towards my HipHlawpin Raplubbin Hug-a-Thug friends, I’ll do another for you:

Fuck the Police – N.W.A.

[Ice Cube]

Beat a police out of shape / and when I’m finished, bring the yellow tape / to tape off the scene of the slaughter
Ice Cube will swarm / on ANY motherfucker in a blue uniform

Compare Battery: a fine not exceeding $2,000 or imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding six months, or both
with Battery of a Police Officer or Federal Agent: fine not exceeding $10,000 or imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding 1 years, or imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months, or 2 or 3 years, or by both fine and imprisonment.

[Eazy-E]
A sucker in a uniform waitin to get shot / by me, or another nigga
And with a gat it don’t matter if he’s smaller or bigger
…  he’ll be the one / that I take out, and then get away
While I’m drivin off laughin this is what I’ll say…

Compare Assault with a machinegun, assault weapon, or a .50 BMG rifle: imprisonment in the state prison for 4, 8, or 12 years.
with Assault with a machinegun against a police officer: imprisonment in the state prison for 6, 9, or 12 years.

Assault with a semiautomatic firearm: imprisonment in the state prison for 3, 6, or 9 years
Assault with a semiautomatic firearm against a police officer:imprisonment in the state prison for 5, 7, or 9 years

Selling Drugs to White People

“The white man love to smoke marijuana
The black man love to cultivate it”
Linval Thompson – I Love Marijuana
Wiz Khalifa – Heart & Soul

Pushing to white people. Not exactly a common hiphop theme, but one that occasionally turns up — usually hand in hand with getting $um, sometimes implied in the logic/lyricism of $elling out. I’m not about to go into the sociology and economics of pushing (got to leave some work for real life grad students) — I’ll stick to the relatively noncontroversial thesis that the occasional displays of self-awareness on the subject are pretty interesting.

“Do I look like I sell drugs?” That’s the refrain of Adam Tensta‘s “Dopeboy,” the song that has enabled me to finish more than one late-night legal memo. Tensta is a straight-edge Swedish rapper who grew up in the Stockholm PJs. The song’s an explicit dig at racial profiling, making the fact that the video is full of gyrating melaninfree hipsters pretty interesting.

[This raises a related point, which is the proliferation of Hipster rap. For some time now, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that certain emcess are strategically integrating looks and sounds that target the young-white-male-demographic of rap music in order to springboard their careers and otherwise Get That Ca$h.  Not Lupe, I think he’s sincere. I’m thinking more of folks like the Cool Kids, Kid Cudi, etc who are provoking reactions like “Fuck that Hipster Shit” by Grip Plyaz, and a string of dis tracks by Mazzi. My friend Nick disagrees strongly with me on this point — he thinks it’s all about appealing to the Kingmaker, who is a big fan of “that hipster shit” as the  Village Voice has observed. And I must concede he has a point . . . It’s unclear what is appropriation, what is reclamation, and what is straight hustle. After all, in many ways, today’s hipster gear is a reformulation of urban streetwear, which has always been kin and kith to hiphop itself, as QTip (himself the so-called original hipster rapper) publicly pronounced on the Mazzi mixtape.]

Call it funny, call it frivolous — irregardless, there’s a razor edge to the reality of our situation. What Mr. Sessions points us to is commonly known as the “100:1” ratio in drug sentencing laws. Codified into law at  21 USC 841 , the Federal Sentencing Guidelines on drug penalties call for a 5-year minimum sentence for mere possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine; the same sentence for cocaine trafficking would require hauling 500g of powdered cocaine — There is no mandatory minimum sentence for mere possession of powder cocaine. (FYI: this sentencing disparity recently went up to the US Supreme Court, which held that it was not mandatory, but permissible, to sentence according to the Federal Guidelines ; Additionally, our Dear President’s administration has pushed for elimination of the disparity.)

Now, not to make any generalized statements about the impact of crack use on the Black community, but 2005 stats report that although 80 percent of those sentenced to federal prison for crack cocaine offenses are Black, two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Hispanic. The disparate impact of sentencing laws is pretty well documented in relevant scholarship. I therefore ask you to pardon my dead prez moment when I say I feel compelled to reconsider the tired point that selling drugs to white people, however lucrative, is integrally part of Keeping The People Down. But so long as I’m on the prez tip, let me recall a concert I saw in my early college days — where dead prez passed a hat through a crowd full of white college kids saying “we see a lot of pale faces in the crowd,” and demanding cash reparations (ostensibly for a local native tribe). It seems to me their comments were a brief flash of awareness that they, too, are pushers — revealing the doublesided nature of hawking hipster rap and controlled substances alike: two systems that allow folks to recoup from the system while they simultaneously contribute to their own subjugation. Not exactly a contradiction that has gone unobserved in recent entries into the rap annals either:

Blame Reagan for making me into a monster
Blame Oliver North and Iran-Contra
I ran contraband that they sponsored
Before this rhyming shit we was in concert.

My First Song

Tryin to stay above water, you know, stay busy, stay workin
The key to staying, on top of things
is treat everything like it’s your first project . . .
Like it’s your first day like back when you was an intern
Like, that’s how you try to treat things like — just stay hungry . . .