I’ve never been a fan of “America’s Most Wanted,” but on one of those nights where the remote ended up absent without leave, I found myself watching a story about the death of a Harlem, N.Y. teenager Phoenix Garrett.

He was allegedly murdered by 13-year-old L’mani Delima at the request of another man, Carlos Thompson, an affiliate of a hip-hop group whose material Garrett was reportedly bootlegging.

Delima, sentenced to eight years for the murder, was apprehended by a police lieutenant at the scene of the crime almost minutes after shooting Garrett five times.

The real travesty here is that Thompson managed to evade arrest for three years, while the impressionable youth involved on both sides of the smoking gun had to wave goodbye to their childhood forever.

Despite reportedly using funds from his hip-hop and drug-dealing circles, there’s still an important element that proves to effectively keep people like Thompson from doing time — the credo amongst many that, despite how heinous a crime, is “Thou shalt not testify in court.”

It’s sad to see such irresponsibility become a sociological phenomenon, supported by popular entertainers and clothing in the form of “Stop Snitchin’” T-shirts, but this is the reality that street paranoia and marketing meetings have cultivated.

Sure, this trend isn’t new, as concepts amongst organized crime communities such as the Mafia code of “Omert?” have existed decades before The Game made his first anti-snitching mixtape. The problem is that the rules of underground crime and those law-abiding citizens have become dangerously blurred.

The plaguing problem is that the existing philosophy has no logical roots or foundation, resulting in a phenomenon that begins to resemble martial law more with each passing day.

Historically within my community, where the relationship with the police has always been rocky at best, the reasoning for many people encouraging anti-establishment tactics against law enforcement came in the form of spurring change in an institution misguided in its principles. The draconian law sentencing, the result of years of imbalanced legislation against people of color, has produced lopsided demographics of who we’re imprisoning — effectively destroying the communities that produced these prisoners.

That ideology, meant to protect and not exonerate, is almost completely lost on today’s youth. They have not a clue the difference between a witness bringing closure to a murder case and destructive, government-based organizations of informants such as the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, from decades past, placing both in the same category.

We mix due process in the name of justice with snitching, now a broad term, a categorization historically best served to define propagators — like COINTELPRO — with no cause other than to undermine programs meant to elevate disenfranchised people.

Instead of encouraging the youth to vote and create institutional change, I find a lot of my peers buying into the hype and sending them mixed signals: Obey the law, but help others disobey it. In 2008, this concept of confidentiality has less to do with restructuring the relationship between law enforcement and civilian, and more to do with establishing a level of “street credibility” which backfires against those not equipped to meet such standards — and doom those who do.

So the question persists: Who will protect those casualties of this war against police if both sides — civilian and criminal — are not willing to provide any solutions?

Unfortunately, that question remains until a maturation process takes place. Textbook insanity is embracing a concept that will fail you time and time again, hoping for change.

Some of us need to wise up and re-evaluate these concepts if we truly believe change can occur in our communities.

Jahshua Smith is the State News minority representative. Reach him at smithjah@msu.edu .