Stopping Crime or Celebrating It?

A profile of New York City's former "hip-hop cop" in the the New Yorker this week left me wondering about hip-hop's culture of self-perpetuating violence, and how it might be slowed down. The New Yorker story - an entertaining ramble around New York City written by Ian Frazier - gave us an insight into the mind of a former detective who apparently knows more than most about the high-rolling and quick-shooting lives of rappers, but it didn't delve deeply into the causes of the violence or offer many thoughts on stopping it.

Derrick Parker worked for the NYPD for 20 years and retired as a detective. He now runs a security company providing services to nightclubs and personal security for musicians and other celebrities. When he was a detective, he solved murders because he knew who to talk to - he seems to know everyone in New York - and now he yearns - just a little bit - to be back in the game. He talks about how violence is bad for hip-hop, but despite his unique insider position with rappers and gang members, he never mentions doing anything to prevent unnecessary shootings.

A telling example is his take on a shooting witnessed by rapper Busta Rhymes. A bodyguard was shot and killed outside of Busta's video shoot in Brooklyn in 2006. Many people think Busta saw the shooting, but he didn't talk to police. Parker said this was to be expected:

"If Busta goes to the cops, he's a snitch," Derrick says. "His popularity and his record sales go way down. It would be impossible for him, career suicide. The detectives on the case should realize that fact and start coming up with other witnesses. They won't make any progress if they keep focusing on Busta."

A former colleague disagrees:

"I think that's bullshit, honestly. So Busta's record sales go down ten per cent. So what? If Busta saw who killed his bodyguard, he should come forward, because it's right. Forget about the record sales. There's a principle involved here. Busta should come forward because it's right."

On one hand Parker is simply being a pragmatic detective, suggesting that cops work the case based on existing realities. Busta won't talk, so don't waste time talking to him. But it seems irresponsible to me for a charismatic, connected insider to accept that a culture of violence and secrecy exists in hip-hop and not do anything to change it. Parker says in the article that he wants to change the culture, but I don't see evidence that he's actively trying to do that.

"My goal was never to arrest and convict rappers. I wanted to let law enforcement know about rap's inner workings, and show the majority, nonviolent element in rap that there were law-enforcement people on their side. My basic goal was to protect rap from itself."

Exactly. This statement from Parker reminds me of all of the former gang members in cities around the world working to stop gang violence. Earlier this year, Alex Kotlowitz wrote in the NY Times Magazine about CeaseFire, a group in Chicago working to prevent gang violence through mediation and negotiation. It's an inspiring story, and one that Parker could replicate in New York. Gang violence and hip-hop violence aren't the same thing, but they're often closely related, and the same model could apply.

CeaseFire treats gang violence like an infectious disease and works to stop it before it happens. Former gang members and other insiders are on-call, and when a potentially violent situation develops they're there to mediate. If a shooting happens, they urge the victim not to retaliate. It sounds like fantasyland, but it's actually working. Gary Slutkin, Ceasefire's founder, says that insiders can spread nonviolence in the same way violence has spread. By talking to their friends and letting them know that shooting it out isn't the only option.

As CeaseFire evolved, Slutkin says he started to realize how much it was drawing on his experiences fighting TB and AIDS. “Early intervention in TB is actually treatment of the most infectious people,” Slutkin told me recently. “They’re the ones who are infecting others. So treatment of the most infectious spreaders is the most effective strategy known and now accepted in the world.” And, he continued, you want to go after them with individuals who themselves were once either infectious spreaders or at high risk for the illness. In the case of violence, you use those who were once hard-core, once the most belligerent, once the most uncontrollable, once the angriest. They are the most convincing messengers. It’s why, for instance, Slutkin and his colleagues asked sex workers in Uganda and other nations to spread the word to other sex workers about safer sexual behavior. Then, Slutkin said, you train them, as you would paraprofessionals, as he and Gove did when they trained birth attendants to spot cholera in Somalia.

Derrick Parker is not the "once hard-core," but he does have the ear of powerful people. If just a few people in his position began to advocate nonviolence, the message might take hold.