Letters to the Editor

• re: practice and intervention

  [Read the article: Police: Woman raped, witnesses do nothing]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Leaving aside the cultural issue, it does take a lot to get over the paralysis that comes when confronted with an unfamiliar situation. I've noticed that small children are often more quick to help than older folks, who have been conditioned not to get involved. I'm not sure how much practice helps; it seems to have a lot to do with what kind of person you are.

  I can't say what I'd do when confronted with a rape in progress. I do know what I did when I walked into a murder. I was stopping at an unfamiliar gas station. I paid and walked out. As I passed through the door, a man entering slammed into me with his shoulder. There was a gunshot behind me, and the cashier fell.

  I got into my car, not running, but at a slightly faster than normal speed. When I looked back, the man was still on the floor. I didn't see blood. This was quite a few years ago and cell phones weren't as common. Then I drove in a random direction. I was maybe half a mile away before I calmed down enough to pull into another place and ask to use the phone; then I called 911 and said that there was gunfire at the gas station, giving the location and a description of the man who had bumped me. (Note that it didn't even occur to me to get his car license.) I still wasn't sure I believed in what had happened. Then I called my mother, because I needed to explain to someone what I had just seen and it all seemed unreal.

  As it turned out, this wasn't a robbery; the gunman was the victim's brother-in-law, and had shot him over a domestic dispute. He was sitting on top of the body holding the gun when the police arrived, and confessed. So I didn't have to give testimony or anything.

  Anyway I can reconstruct my pattern of thought: Well, that was rude (in reference to the guy slamming me). Was that a gunshot? Followed by a strong feeling of, "That didn't happen, I must be wrong about what I just saw."

  I think it's that feeling, "That didn't happen, I must be confused," that keeps so many people from acting appropriately in a situation like this. In my case, I made a phone call, but didn't intervene and didn't think quickly enough to get information to ID the killer.

  Compare me to my husband, who has intervened in several different situations. We were walking into our usual gas station, and a man came running out the door holding a gun. My husband didn't take a breath, just tackled him, disarmed him, tossed the gun into the bushes, flipped him over, and held him pinned until the owner came out. It happened so quickly that by the time the dangerous part was over, I was still figuring out what the hell was going on. My mother thinks my husband is a nutcase for risking his life like that, but his statement was that we know the guy who runs the place, he wasn't going to do nothing, and he was in control of the situation; he could judge how risky it was from the guy's attitude. And I have to admit he appears to have been right. He was an Airborne Ranger and Pathfinder, and had the usual training they get. No other training. He's also pretty good at that sort of thing - reading body language, and judging situations on the fly. When some guys were trying to rob the Chinese restaurant we go to, he stepped up and said, "Is there a problem?" and the guys - five of them, with knives - just walked out. I wouldn't have called that good odds, but he was dead right about it. In case you think he's just too macho to live, there was another situation in a different restaurant where a man started by harrassing the waitress sexually, and escalated to threats, and my husband said, "I'm not going to mess with that guy, he's got something wrong with him, go to the back and stay there while I call the police." The guy did have something wrong with him; he was on drugs. He left on his own but was arrested when he came back and fought with police in the parking lot.

  Last, compare the two of us to my friend, who is a black belt and a karate instructor. He was driving at night and saw two cars stopped with a gang of boys (rich young white kids) beating someone up in the road. He stopped to break up the fight. He never ended up throwing a punch; he froze. And the kids beat the crap out of him with golf clubs and put him in the hospital. He almost had to have a kidney removed. Now, that's an example of a guy who is trained, but the training did him no good whatsoever. Not only did he completely fail to correctly estimate the danger of the situation, but when faced with a situation where he needed to hit someone, he found he wasn't willing to do it. He's a very gentle person; I wasn't surprised when I heard he wasn't able to hit someone in a real fight.

  I'm not sure what creates the difference in ability to function in dangerous circumstances, and how much is training, but the difference is definitely there.

  Permalink Friday, August 24, 2007 05:54 PM