Is that girl being raped? This is awkward, I'm gonna walk by

Alt. Focus: Have you ever witnessed a crime and stood by? Or have you stepped in or seen someone else step in?

I once saw someone try to park in a spot but she hit the parked car next to her on her way in. The driver then proceeded to keep trying to move forward and ended up scraping the shit out of the car next to her (like, 1 foot by 4 foot wide). We were looking for a spot ourselves and just stopped there completely dumbstruck. We quickly parked and rushed back to make sure that bitch left her contact information and was held accountable but she was already gone.

We were 18 and obviously had no foresight. I should have jumped out of the fucking car right then and there, called the police and taken pictures.

Focus
People are suggesting that the absence of good samaritan laws in China and lawsuits against people trying to help the injured has created this atmosphere where bystanders don't want to offer assistance lest they be accused of something themselves.

 

I was sitting on a beach in Barcelona, and watched a couple walk into the water leaving their bags behind. I then watched as some seedy motherfucker crept up, grabbed their bags, and then power walked away.

Serves them right for being so stupid to leave their shit unattended in Barcelona. I mean, Barcelona is a beautiful city and all, but the filthy shifty fuckers who will rob you blind in a second ruin it.

 

This is where the real bullshit comes in. For instance say you see a girl getting raped and you have the integrity to run over and try to help her. But in the process you end up kicking the guy in the head and putting him in a coma or something ... can you still be sued by his family? I don't think it is unheard of.

Sidenote* - on the other hand, while trying to do a google search to back up my claim, I typed this - "guy rescue girls get screwed" just type that in yourself and read the sixth link down on the search page ... wow.

Focus 1: I was standing in front of a restaurant full of people when I saw a lady try to parallel park and in the process hitting both cars between her. She drove off obviously, but no one ran over to do anything. There was just a bunch of "Oh shit" and "Oh wow".

Also: The only situation I can think of was when a friend and I saw a little girl in the park walking and crying. She passed by a couple families but no one stopped to talk to her or anything, they probably assumed she was with one of the other families. Well we asked her what was wrong and she ended up being lost. So we called the police and waited there till they came.

 

We're surprised that Asians kept to themselves and didn't get involved?

 

Especially a baby girl. Aren't they forced by law to throw baby girls down a well?

 

Back when I was living in my apartment I was playing FFXI when I heard what I thought were gunshots from down the hall. I called the cops and went down the hall to see what happened and sure enough there was a guy on the floor who had been shot. Apparently the victim's friend let some aquaintance in the building who shot the victim because he thought the victim had some drugs or something. Several days later when I was talking to the building manager about some other issue he told me that no one called the police except for me and the mother of the victim wanted to thank me for saving the guy's life.

 

Alt. Focus: Have you ever witnessed a crime and stood by? Or have you stepped in or seen someone else step in?

Two winters ago, as I was leaving a bar I frequent I saw a drunk guy rummaging through peoples cars. I confronted him and he took a swing at me and hit me in the mouth, then I broke his nose and he crumbled to the ground and my friends called the police and he got hauled away. Not sure what all he got charged with but the bar gave the police video of him going through the cars and him trying to beat me up. I now have a permanent scar on the inside of my upper lip.

 

When I think back to a couple cases of harassment (mostly on the subway, and one time physically fighting off a guy in Paris), what makes me even more angry than the harassment itself is thinking about how everyone just watched or walked by and didn't do anything, even when I would lock eyes with them, in the case of the subway. So it's a rule of mine to step in if I ever see that happening to someone else. I've only had the opportunity to do it once, and it was pretty easy since the guy was older but had whatever wrong with him where he was just very ... simple ... and I don't think he actually understood that he was being creepy. As in, there wasn't much of a fear that he would then turn on me (actually, he was just kind of moving down the platform and had already stopped on me for a little while) or that things would get violent. I'm really curious to see if I'll actually follow through in a sketchier situation.

Like, one time I was in South Boston with a friend, and we came across this guy getting beaten up really badly, and we just turned and rushed to the T. I didn't want to get involved with the Irish mob. I've seen Ben Affleck movies. I'd like to think that I would be braver when helping out another girl, though, in the mindset of getting revenge vicariously through them. Or something.

 

I thought there was a Good Samaritan law that was passed to hold harmless those who step in - or is that just for doctors?

 

Otherwise, it'd be open season on lawyers.

 

The Mrsanthropic and I were driving down a main street in the town we once lived in, and saw a guy punch, several times, a woman he was walking with. They were both in their late 20s, or about that age. She was kind of scurrying ahead of him trying to get away, and it was obvious this man was going to wallop her again when he caught up to her.

The wife made a u-turn in the center of the street and pulled up next to the girl. While I got out to slow the guy down by getting in his way and talking to him, the Mrsanthropic asked her if she wanted out of there. The girl said yes, climbed in the car, and they both took off - leaving me alone on the sidewalk with a very pissed off dude. He was about my size, but if he was nuts enough to whale on his girl in broad daylight on a busy street, who knows what he may have tried to do to me. And he was angry. Very angry. I stalled him just long enough to let the car get well down the street, and block his view of the license plate, then stepped out of his way and walked in the opposite direction. Fortunately he had no intention of taking his anger out on me, and didn't follow me. I think it had more do with the fact that I wasn't a 115 pound woman, or at least the 115 pound woman who had pissed him off, than any concern on his part about what I might do. I milled around while the guy split, and the wife met me bout 20 minutes later, after driving this girl to where her car was parked and watching her leave.

If this occurred tomorrow, I would do the smart thing and call the police, particularly since we now have a little Missanthropic dependent on us. But I'd like to hope that someone would help out my little girl if she was in a similar situation.

 

Focus: The bystander effect is easy to dismiss until you're in one of those situations. I'm an EMT and every couple months I see someone passed out in the street. When you're on a subway platform with hundreds of other people ignoring the slumped body, it would be so easy to walk past them and go about your day. Chances are, you'd forget about it within a few minutes.

I make sure to see that anyone I see like this is okay, on the off-chance that they are in a diabetic coma, having a heart attack, or OD'ing. But you can be damn sure the last thing I want to do is get involved in a situation like that.

The psychology behind the bystander effect goes beyond something as simple as this. Our minds are designed to assume that if no one else is reacting to a crisis, there is no reason to panic or get involved. Groups of people have watched their own friends drown because they thought that surely if it was a true emergency the whole group would be getting engaged. The book The Unthinkable deals with a lot of these elements.

In short, what I'm saying is that this isn't a social issue, it's literally human nature. Even someone trained to act will be hesitant unless they have a lot of experience overcoming that urge or know specifically to suppress it.

 

A few years ago I was bored at work so I was just staring out the window into the parking lot which had a few other shops. I see a delivery truck driving very slowly and then it stops next to a car. The guy gets out and opens the front door, grabs what looks like a pocketbook and then starts to drive away. I go out there and just get the name of the business on the side of the truck. I find the owner of the car and her pocketbook is gone (pretty stupid to leave it in an unlocked car).

Call the police and I give the company name and a description to the cops. They found him about an hour later with all her credit cards on the seat and he had already used one.

 

I understand the passive bystander thing. I've been in countless situations where I shut up and move on instead of intervening. But not when serious shit goes down:

A college friend of mine was walking home late at night when he noticed a gang bang in an alley. He shouted at them as he ran in their direction. The men scattered, leaving the girl behind. I can never remember how his story ended, as I haven't spoken to him in years. Basically, he saw to it that she got home safe.

I was walking with my now ex when we heard an accident up the street. A car had hit a motorcyclist. We were already walking that direction but after a moment I looked at my ex and said, "What're you doing? Run over there." She was a doctor. Amazingly, another passing doctor was already tending to him. After a few minutes, I grabbed one of the on-lookers and we moved the guy's bike into a legal parking spot. Then the ambulance arrived and we left.

Another time, I was walking home when I saw some of my friends half a block away talking to two strangers. Took me a minute but once I realized what was happening, I sprinted over and threw myself inbetween my friends and their muggers. With my hands in the air, trying to talk two knife-wielding kids out of robbing my friends, a few girls who I knew walked by. We locked eyes and they kept on walking. I wrote the whole story on my website. (Looking forward to your vitrol, Ball Sack.)

It's not hard to do the right thing. But if you don't do it, no one else will.

 

Here, it's motorcycle accidents. The cops are corrupt, and it's your word against theirs in determining fault. If there's a foreigner involved, bet your ass that they'll be footing the bill.

We saw two kids (one 12, one no more than 16) smash each other up on motorbikes, no helmets. The 12 year old boy basically switched lanes into the other one. They were lying in the middle of the street moaning. I helped the 16 year old hobble off the road, because traffic was driving right around the accident. Her foot was pretty mangled, and she had some road rash but that was about it. The shitty little 12 year old had some nice gashes on his elbows, but hopped up and starts cursing at everyone. A random Indonesian and I cleared the bikes off the street and kicked the debris into the gutter. The girl called her parents and the boy drove off presumably to continue being an obnoxious little cunt.

We were discussing it at work, when we were told specifically not to touch anyone or anything involved in an accident. Most of the people at work have been in some kind of motorbike accident, and each time not a single person helped get them out of the street or to a hospital. One dude was hit by a car like Grand Theft Auto and had to lay there for a half an hour.

 

This is what happens when there are too many people in a city, country, world.

Wait a second, don't Chinese families drown infant daughters? Weird she escaped that.

 

One time I was walking home drunk off my ass and kept trying to get someone to give me a ride but no one stopped at any point of the 2-3 mile walk. 2 days I happened to be driving home on the same route pretty late on a very cold night and saw a guy standing with his thumb up so I figured I'd try to "be part of the solution" and give the guy a ride. It seemed fine at first, he told me where he lived and that his car had broken down so I started driving him down. He asked to use my phone which made a me a bit weary since he looked like a pretty rough dude, possibly homeless, but I figured what is he going to do. So he uses my phone gives it back no problem. Then he asks me if I can give him some money. I thought this was a bit much. I had a couple of bucks on me but I am by no means a wealthy person so I lied and told him I didn't have any cash on me. He said we could drive to an ATM where I could get cash...for him. At that point I told I had to get home and go to bed and sorry I couldn't be of more help. I mean I gave the guy a ride and let him use my phone and then he wants me to drive to an ATM so I can give him money too? Just rubbed me the wrong way. I guess I just got unlucky though and it's not like he did me any harm so whatever.

 

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what happened to me.