The origin of “stop snitching” is very unclear to many people, but from what I’ve learned my opinion is it is a campaign to convince criminals to stop “snitching” on other criminals that were not yet located, not yet found guilty, or have not yet been sentenced. Some public officials and others say that it is a campaign used by criminals to frighten people with information from reporting their activities to the police.
One example of how stop snitching gained national attention was in the year 2004 in Baltimore Maryland, when an NBA star, Carmelo Anthony who is part of the Denver Nuggets basketball team, was seen in a home video and he stated that it was a joke and that it should not be taking seriously. This movie was about men claiming to be drug dealers that addressed the camera and threatened violence against anyone who reports what they know about their crimes to the authorities.
Also, another example of how stop snitching spread across the world is by rap groups who had t-shirts made with stop snitching sayings on them like “ill never tell”, stop snitching, snitches get stitches, and also some t-shirts had bullet holes on them implying that snitches should or will be shot.
Due to these world wide campaigns some police departments created there own campaign called “keep talking”, which used free DVD’s and t- shirts in a method similar to that of the Stop snitching campaign. Its goal was to assure state witnesses of their safety from retaliation and the importance of cleaning up America’s streets.