This Article could have many titles: Action vs. Inaction, Should I or Shouldn’t I, or the one below (but it’s too big) are all decent titles. I choose this one today, because of a conversation I had with a coworker a while back, of which I was reminded today.

I would’a, I should’a, I could’a, but I didn’t vs. I wouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have, I could have not, but I did it anyway.

Not doing something (depending on the situation of course) might be just as bad, if not worse, than having done something. If you are aware of someone who has committed or is about to commit a crime and you do not report it, you are complicit in the act. That means you are responsible for it occurring (if you knew of it beforehand), for their getting away with it (if you learned of it after the fact, and responsible for future criminal activities by those same people if you never report it.

Who benefits from the terms Nark and Snitch? An even better question is who uses this term? The answer…. criminals. Criminals who hurt, steal from, and or murder other people. Criminals who harass and intimidate people who just want to live their lives in safety, by telling them that they will be narks or snitches if they go to the police for help and threaten harm to them, their families, and their friends in retribution. How can we really live in safety? By turning them in and making sure they cannot do it again. Yes, this means that some innocent people will get hurt and possibly killed, but living in fear and letting criminals hurt and kill people anyway and without any hindrance isn’t helping anything or a good way to live.

If your ‘friends’ enjoy committing criminal activities and tell you that you cannot be their friend if you don’t pitch in and help, they aren’t very good friends. The simple fact that they are pressuring you to do something that will end you up dead, in jail, or on the run (no better than a hunted animal), makes them the worst kind of people to be around.

On a side note, there is no such thing as a victimless criminal activity. We all, each and every one of us, pay for them. Whether through paying higher insurance costs, fear of attack, higher taxes, or higher costs for products.