E-Mail This Article to a Friend It’s gotta be the shirts, continued
	Word on the street StopSnitching.com CEO Tangg da Juice, 33, was part of the Wiseguys group of Boston rappers who rose to respectability in the '90s and - briefly - a contract with Def Jam records. Wiseguys' hook was that the 12 members had united from 12 different gangs from different parts of Boston; Tangg represented Eggleston Square, which, unfortunately, has re-emerged this year as one of the city's hot spots of violence. But, he says, it's not as bad as when he was a kid. "I definitely feel like the generation I came from was a lot worse, growing up in Boston in the '80s. Now there's just a certain group of kids, and they deal with their issues in a violent way." One of Tangg's ways of dealing with his issues was through his lyrics, which have not always taken the kindest view of Boston's men in blue: They got new laws to make my crew drop But we trying to eat what we supposed to do, stop? Already know that they watching from the rooftop Might got a vest but you ain't a bulletproof cop I wish the tables would turn for one day yeah You in a fight where nobody wanna play fair - from "Rap Star (All I Wanted)" Hey yo, Tangg's the ruffneck with the Tec hangin out the window When they sleep on the T, smoke em like the endo Niggas'll know when I pull, the whole patrol drop pants On your block with the glock, nigga, that might be yo ass So yo, don't ever call a nigga lazy Cause all the BPD know we all crazy - from "5 Minutes of Doom (Comin' from the Legion)" But Tangg occasionally showed his sweet side: I swear to God Ima try to keep this gun down Use to be fun, but it ain't fun now I gotta live for my daughter and my son now We one now - from "Rap Star (All I Wanted)" _DB

Tangg insists the shirt was not intended to intimidate witnesses at a trial. "In no way are we saying that people should not testify," he says, adding that "there are places to wear the shirt, and court is not one of them."

Most teens and young adults in Boston’s high-crime areas questioned by this reporter over the past year define snitching as agreeing to testify against a friend in exchange for a reduced sentence. Few think the shirts are a warning that bystanders will be shot for cooperating.

"That strikes me as a Talmudic distinction," says Menino spokesperson Seth Gitell. "The shirts, taken at their plain meaning, encourage people to remain silent when their voices could be served helping to put a stop to crime and violence that all too often plague neighborhoods in this city."

But this misses the important difference between those who don’t want to help the police, and those who want to but either fear the repercussions or simply don’t trust the police. "I’ve had people stand up in community meetings and say, ‘We know who’s doing it, but we’re not going to tell you,’" says Commissioner O’Toole. She rightly complains that the state provides absolutely no funds for witness-protection efforts; a bill to do so stalled this year in the state House of Representatives. And O’Toole concedes that many residents, particularly in minority communities, have some historical reasons for distrusting Boston’s police.

But neither O’Toole nor Menino seems to appreciate the enormous resentment and ill will that comes from the high-pressure deals for testimony that go on routinely inside the BPD walls, which pit friend against friend, and family against family. Individuals guilty of little or nothing get threatened with harsh charges if they don’t cooperate, while known criminals work deals that send them back to the streets.

Besides, the mayor’s righteous indignation over the "code of silence" in the streets looks awfully hypocritical: the same code exists within his police department, and he’s never complained publicly about that.

WAR ON HIP-HOP CULTURE

But perhaps most important, by grouping all witnesses together — and all of the shirts’ tens of thousands of wearers together (Tangg says roughly 25,000 to 35,000 have been sold in Boston and elsewhere) — Menino has drawn a line between "us" and "them" in exactly the wrong place. Menino, the Boston Police Department, and the district attorney need those bystander witnesses to side with the authorities against the relatively small number of violent criminals causing the trouble. Instead, Menino has effectively labeled hip-hop culture as the enemy of law enforcement.

If you tell Boston’s hip-hop generation that they have to choose sides between Mayor Menino and Made Men, it’s no contest. The BostonRap.com message board has recently seen suggestions for new T-shirts reading "Stop Snitchin’ — Fuck Menino."

According to reports, Menino had no idea that the people selling the shirt are popular local rappers and businessmen, as well as trendsetters of hip-hop fashion who are also responsible for the currently hot faux-bulletproof vests. Certainly nobody expects Tom Menino to have Tangg’s "Rap Star (All I Ever Wanted)" loaded on his iPod. But his unfamiliarity with the culture’s leaders only reinforced the distance between city authority and city youth as he rushed to demonize the shirts.

"The mayor no doubt does the best he can for the city, but he has no clue what goes on inside the city, and what goes on with kids in the city," says Rusti, manager of Funky Fresh Records in Dudley Square. "And the people who he supposedly has with their ear to the ground have no clue either."

"If you take the shirts away, it isn’t going to change anything.... Boston should embrace hip-hop culture instead of looking at it as a problem," says Tangg. "If it’s not our shirts, it’s our jeans, our sneakers, the way we walk."

"The mayor is digging a hole for himself doing this," says Rusti. "The people he’s trying to reach see the city as anti-hip-hop culture."

And the people he’s using to reach them are not people the hip-hop generation listens to. Menino held a second summit last week with a group of ministers, and met with the Black Ministerial Alliance this Tuesday. The plan is to increase their outreach efforts to help stem the tide of violence.

It’s the same names we always see at these meetings: Reverend Gregory Groover of Charles Street AME, Reverend Eugene Rivers of the Ella J. Baker House, Reverend William Dickerson of Greater Love Tabernacle, Reverend Ray Hammond of Bethel AME. Nothing against them or the integrity of their intentions, but these are your father’s role models. They have long since become symbols of the halls of power.

Nothing drew attention to the divide more sharply than Reverend Bruce Wall’s "occupation" of Lyndhurst Street in August. Wall — and Menino and others who joined the effort — treated the Codman Square street like a foreign war zone. Which hardly mattered, because most of the young people, particularly the gangbangers, wanted nothing to do with Wall anyway.

There are people in Boston who can talk to these young men and women. A program called True Hip Hop Culture, which works with English High students, does great stuff, as does a similar program in Codman Square. Rapper DL has organized a Christmas hip-hop fundraiser for the Home for Little Wanderers at the Milky Way. The city needs to spend more time cultivating these efforts, rather than trying to tell young Bostonians what to wear and who to listen to.

David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein[a]phx.com.