Germantown man’s campaign: ‘Start snitching’

Standing by a makeshift memorial of teddy bears and candles outside the East Germantown store where a Bangladeshi shopkeeper was shot and killed in a robbery last week, Jeff Templeton wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a bold message: "Don't let me see you do it."

With the killer of 20-year-old Fakhur Uddin still at large, Templeton hopes the shirt's statement will help empower fearful residents to reclaim their neighborhoods.

"This 'stop snitchin' ' is going to be the end of us all if we continue to let it run our city," said Templeton, 36, a Germantown native.

The shirts sell for $10. So far, Templeton has sold more than 300 of them.

"Fear is not an option. Don't let me see you do it.com," the front of the shirt declares. Under that message are two hands, one black, one white, intertwined. The back of the shirts, available in black or white, reads: "Our History. Our Future. You Decide!"

"A lot of people think this snitchin' theme affects only certain areas," Templeton said. "It's not just North Philly's problem. It's not just West Philly's problem. It's everybody's problem. No one should dismiss the fact that this is going on."

Last year, disgusted by shirts that promote "Killadelphia" and proclaim "Snitches Get Stitches," Templeton decided to market his own statement.

"Death is popular now," he said. "These kids don't understand that death is permanent, death is real."

Templeton admitted he had lived his own "rough part of life."

Growing up, he never knew his father. His mother was an alcoholic, he said, and his stepfather was abusive.

The notorious Junior Black Mafia ruled his neighborhood, and at 14, he joined a gang and started selling drugs. At 17, his mother sent him to a group home.

"That's when I saw the difference between dead ends and roads that continue through life," he said.

When he returned home, he earned his high school diploma - with honors, he pointed out - and went to trade school.

He later joined a rap group called Two Black Three Strong, which featured antiviolence lyrics and performed at Philadelphia and Camden public schools. He also volunteered at a Philadelphia violence-prevention group. He now works for an auto service as a locksmith.

"I turned something negative into something positive," he said, referring to his old penchant for running the streets.

Templeton lives on a modest, tight-knit block in West Germantown with his fiancee and her two kids, and he's known to cut everybody's grass.

Throughout the years, the neighbors have banded together to battle abandoned houses, trash-strewn lots, graffiti, marijuana smoking, and loud music.

"You can walk three blocks and find just about any drug you want," lamented one resident.

Templeton has recruited several neighbors to wear his shirts. Some of them attended the vigil outside the store earlier this week.

"Jeff has a concept that wakes people up," said Warren Smith, Templeton's next-door neighbor. "There's a group that says 'don't snitch.' This is the opposite of that. If you do it, and I see you do it, I'm telling. It's as simple as that. I don't want to go to a funeral. We're trying to deter this stuff from getting into our neighborhood."

"You can't hide in the house," said Hap Haven, 56, Templeton's "surrogate dad" and neighbor. "Then the neighborhood gets taken over. At that point, you have an uphill battle."

Through his shirts and Web site, Templeton hopes to turn his message into a citywide movement, and he urges individual involvement. Become a block captain, he suggested, or organize a neighborhood cleanup, and build solid relationships with police officers and elected officials.

For Templeton, the difference between action and apathy is simple.

"We just have to do it," he said. "We need to get more involved in ending this snitchin' concept. So many lives have ended, and we've seemed to reverse our values. There's no honor in this code - just chaos."