Start Snitchin'!

April 28, 2007 1:36 PM

Crime Stoppers (motto: get paid to snitch!) is the Yang to the Stop Snitchin' (motto: stop snitchin!) campaign's Yin. This commercial, which I'm relatively convinced is not a parody, best illustrates the consumer value proposition behind crime stoppers.
posted by jonson (21 comments total)

So one turns people in for deck furniture?
posted by hototogisu at 1:41 PM on April 28, 2007

We already have for-profit prisons, why not for-profit prosecutions?

Drop a dime, earn a dollar.
posted by three blind mice at 1:43 PM on April 28, 2007

We've had CrimeStoppers here in Canada for as long as I can remember (Sadly, our commercials have never featured a trio of hotties who can talk to the television). As a wee one, I always hoped to stumble upon some crime and net me a cool $2k.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:02 PM on April 28, 2007

Snitches get stitches (and cash!).
posted by Frank Grimes at 2:12 PM on April 28, 2007

I prefer the slogan "Snitchin' is bitchin'."
posted by champthom at 2:24 PM on April 28, 2007

I hadn't realized that CrimeStoppers had previously been a radical Canadian thing. Like Alvy says, it was a good balance tipper when I was a kid. Having an awesome, illegal secret will always be cooler than being a good citizen, but they're both way less cool than minibikes.

I'm just saying, with that kind of money, you could buy, like, two minibikes.

They'd both be red, but one would have tiger stripes.
posted by Simon! at 2:33 PM on April 28, 2007 [4 favorites]

I prefer the slogan "Snitchin' is bitchin'."

A local PSA for wearing seatbelts features 10-12 year old hip-hoppers dancing around singing "clickin' is kickin'"
posted by delmoi at 2:38 PM on April 28, 2007

You mean this kind of thing isn't popular in the States? Hell, I can even recite the number they'd give out on Canadian television after showing a vignette on the news about how a Crimestoppers tip brought someone to justice. (1-800-222-TIPS, as spoken by the always awesome Mark Dailey.)
posted by chrominance at 2:40 PM on April 28, 2007

This is probably a good place to reveal that, at an LA MeFi meetup last fall, jonson showed up wearing a rad "Stop Snitchin'" t-shirt.

[NOT SNITCHIST]
posted by the_bone at 2:52 PM on April 28, 2007

the_bone, stop snitchin' on jonson's lack of sartorial taste
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:55 PM on April 28, 2007

In the case of drug laws, I don't agree with this—but with more serious crimes? Why not? Sure, I have a no snitching personal ethos for everyday sort of stuff, the kinds of things everyone deals with in daily life. And I don't agree with the drug laws. But violent crimes? Definitely. Property crimes? Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, yeah, Crime Stoppers has been in the states where I've lived since at least the late 70s or so.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:58 PM on April 28, 2007

Ending the war on drugs would increase drastically the respect for the law and law enforcement in the US, in my opinion.
posted by delmoi at 3:06 PM on April 28, 2007

I kept waiting for Jim Dangle, Junior, or Jones to show up.

Sadly, they did not.
posted by quin at 3:12 PM on April 28, 2007

Is this now a debate on the War on (Some) Drugs?

I'm no fan of the prosecution imbalances, but when there's a dozen strange cars a day parked up the block, I'm on the phone.
posted by dhartung at 3:34 PM on April 28, 2007

I've always enjoyed the CRIMESTOPPERS^TM reenactments with the creepy music. One more thing that Canada gave the world.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:41 PM on April 28, 2007

D'oh.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:49 PM on April 28, 2007

When the neighbors up the street are having some sort of ding-a-ling circus, I like to shake the crime stick. My residential neighborhood doesn't take kindly to any kind of noisy ruckus, or loud horsin' off.
posted by illovich at 3:57 PM on April 28, 2007

Hey, snitchin' is big bucks!
posted by merelyglib at 4:58 PM on April 28, 2007

I have a no snitching personal ethos for everyday sort of stuff

And yet you insist on telling us.
posted by yerfatma at 6:02 PM on April 28, 2007

Visit any one of my three ice-cream precinct locations.
posted by eritain at 3:38 AM on April 30, 2007

The "Stop Snitchin' " T-shirt drama looks, at first blush, like a dustup over a simple counterculture message launched by some urban criminal entrepreneurs: that friends don't snitch on friends. But it is, in fact, a symptom of a more insidious reality that has largely escaped public notice: For the last 20 years, state and federal governments have been creating criminal snitches and setting them loose in poor, high-crime communities. The backlash against snitches embodies a growing national recognition that snitching is dangerous public policy—producing bad information, endangering innocent people, letting dangerous criminals off the hook, compromising the integrity of police work, and inciting violence and distrust in socially vulnerable neighborhoods...

(from slate)
posted by jcruelty at 5:29 PM on April 30, 2007