Chicago Sun-Times Editorial: There is no honor in silence

Chicago Sun-Times Editorial: There is no honor in silence
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
April 21, 2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/2181702,CST-EDT-edit21b.article


The plague of silence that is destroying Chicago neighborhoods -- don't talk to the cops or you're a "snitch" -- is even more deeply ingrained than we had understood.
That, we believe, is the lesson to be drawn from Tuesday's Sun-Times story about a dying teen who refused to say who had shot him.

"I know," Robert Tate, 17, told the police, "but I ain't telling you s - - -."

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. Tate had been walking on the wrong side of the road himself, with a long juvenile rap sheet for drugs, weapons and car theft.

But the Chicago Police tell us the street's "code of silence" is too often honored by even the most law-abiding Chicagoans, even in cases involving the most innocent victims.

As we wrote last week, in the first of three editorials about how the code of silence denies justice to the families of murder victims, the police are only as effective as we -- the good people of Chicago -- allow them to be.

There is no honor in silence. We must help.

Next week, in our second "Silence Kills" editorial, we'll tell you about a Mexican-American couple for whom time has stood still since their son was killed six years ago.

Their boy's mistake? He rode his bike to the store.