I just finished watching Season 4 (and I'm pissed that I have to wait until August 12 to see Season 5), but I wanted to bring up something about the "snitch" label. I really started thinking about it when
I can understand why some of the older blacks would mistrust the police -- hell, as corrupt and racist as a lot of major city police departments were in the '60s and '70s, who could blame them? -- but the younger generation doing the same... I don't know. I should offer the caveat that I'm white and I grew up in a decent middle class neighborhood in Indiana, so I've never been to some of the places in life these people have, but it seems to me that the whole "don't snitch" ethos is created by manipulative gang leaders to protect their own assess.
I mean, as Bodie said in the Season 4 finale, he sacrificed a lot to protect his bosses, but when it was time for them to help him, they fucked him over. Gang leaders like Marlo seem like cult leaders to me: they take impressionable kids and fill their heads with this "don't snitch" crap and make it sound all honorable and noble, but all they're really doing is using them. And the kids who take that ideal to heart completely buy into it. It's one thing to not talk to the police; it's another to actively hunt down anyone who does talk to them.
I don't know, I may not have the right to critique this mindset, but after seeing what happened to Randy, I just got to thinking about the whole thing and it really made me sick. Anyone else have any ideas on this?
As for cops know a days, it seems things still have a long way to go. My brother is an officer here in Chicago and to here some of his co-workers talk you'd think it was the '60s and '70s.