If someone is being attacked, what do you do?

Neighbors listened but did nothing as a woman in Queens, New York was attacked by her ex-boyfriend and stabbed to death with a knife in August 2008. Garcia had come to her cousin’s condo after drinking at a bar with her ex-boyfriend, Segundo Penafiel. Penafiel had beaten her before and she had a restraining order against him, but after she left the bar, he followed her to her cousin’s apartment. Garcia called another cousin from out of state, asking for the cousin to dial 911 when Penafiel began fighting with her at the apartment, according to reports. Unfortunately, the cousin and her mother were unable to get through to New York City 911 until approximately 2 a.m.

The young woman managed to get to the street. Police found her in a pool of blood on the street outside her apartment building at 2:10 a.m. She had been lying on the street, crying out for help to pedestrians and passing cars. They all ignored her. Although she was alive when the police arrived, she died soon after her arrival at the hospital.

While her neighbors may have made a judgment call based on what they assumed was Garcia’s drunken condition, they also may have been suffering from ‘bystander apathy’, also known as ‘Genovese syndrome’. The term ‘Genovese syndrome’ was coined in 1964, when 38 people in an apartment building witnessed a woman named Kitty Genovese being stabbed to death, also in Queens. Genovese was attacked by Winston Moseley at 3 a.m. under a streetlamp close to her building. Moseley went after Genovese three separate times over the course of 30 minutes, but no one came to her rescue. Neighbors who could see or hear the attack from their apartments said they didn’t want to get involved, or assumed it was a lover’s quarrel or that someone else had already called the police.

The New York Times reported on the event: “For more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens and did nothing to intervene, not even phone the police.”

A similar incident occurred in Hartford, Connecticut. On May 30, 2008, an elderly man was severely injured in a hit-and-run accident, and lay in the middle of the street until the police arrived. After being struck by a car, Angel Arce Torres lay seriously injured in the street, while none of the pedestrians and drivers who witnessed the accident while the victim was crossing the street in Hartford, Connecticut, came directly to his aid. Although some bystanders called 911, they did not make any effort to help the man on the street or even see if he was all right.

Hartford residents for the most part were shocked when they learned through the media that no one came to Mr. Torres’ aid as he lay injured in the street. The injuries Angel Arce Torres suffered from the accident paralyzed him from the neck down and he will always require a respirator to breathe.

The Hartford police chief commented, “At the end of the day we've got to look at ourselves and understand that our moral values have now changed. We have no regard for each other. We no longer have a moral compass. Anything goes.”

One letter was sent to a local news paper, addressed to the citizens of Hartford and read, “The video shows just how much heart you don't have. So be proud, very proud. The whole world has found out just what kind of a city you are.”

In 2007 in St. Paul, Minnesota, a security video from an apartment hallway showed at least 10 witnesses ignoring a woman's cries for help for more than an hour as a man beat and sexually assaulted her in the hallway. The surveillance video clearly showed men and women looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before retreating as the woman was assaulted for nearly 90 minutes. Police said they responded to a call of drunken behavior and found a Somali 25-year-old immigrant, standing above an unconscious woman in the hallway. The woman's clothing had been pulled up and she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh, according to the police.

The video also showed one person looking out of her door three times. It shows another person walking up to the victim, observing what's going on, then turning and putting up the hood of his sweatshirt and walking away. The surveillance video shows the attacker and the woman leaving an apartment, and the attacker standing over the woman and removing his pants. A man approached the attacker and the woman at one point and the attacker got up, confronted the man and, with no pants on, chased him down the hallway. The attacker then returned to the woman. The video also shows the attacker striking the woman five times. At one point, the 26-year-old woman knocked on a door, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside that apartment told police he did not open the door or look out, but said he did call police — although the police later said that they had no record of his call, according to court documents.

Minnesota law makes it a petty misdemeanor to not give reasonable help to a person in danger of grave physical harm. The police chief said it is unlikely police would pursue charges against witnesses in this case because authorities would have to show that witnesses knew the woman was in extreme danger and that the witnesses might say that they didn’t think she was in grave danger. If I were the chief of police, I would have charged them because they would have had to know that the woman was in extreme danger of being placed in a position of suffering from grave physical harm.

On September 19, 2008, for 10 minutes, a young woman in Toronto was sexually assaulted during a vicious attack on a sidewalk in a downtown neighbourhood, but not one person who heard her screaming called the police. The 25-year-old student was walking east on residential Cecil Street just east of Beverley Street and one block south of the University of Toronto campus, when she was grabbed from behind and dragged into the alley where she was sexually assaulted viciously around 4 a.m. The attacker was described as a white man, about 25-30 years old, 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-8, wearing a dark blue hoodie and light coloured pants.

A 51-year-old woman, who lives directly across the street from the alley, said she heard a woman crying and screaming "for about seven minutes" at the time of the attack, but didn't think to call police because she was half asleep.

Some human behaviorists and psychologists say that human beings are inclined to be unresponsive when accidents or crimes occur in front of large groups of people. One psychologist explained, "If no one rushes to the scene, people assume the others know more than they do." He added, “When there are many witnesses to a crime, each individual assumes that someone else will step in to help, and therefore feels that inaction is acceptable. Victims often have a better chance of survival when there is only one witness nearby.”

According to social psychologists, the event is an example of ‘bystander effect,’ which occurs when many witnesses are present at an accident and nobody knows who should respond. An ethicist at Duke University said that the accident reflects “a deep chasm between our ethics and our reactions.” A psychiatrist explained that when people are afraid, they often turn inward and isolate themselves. On a larger scale, I think that was what happened when Hitler was slowly attacking European countries. The Americans for the most part, were turning inward and isolating themselves from the problems the Europeans were facing.

A common explanation of this phenomenon is that, with others present, observers all assume that someone else is going to intervene and so they each individually refrain from doing so and feel less responsible. This is an example of how diffusion of responsibility leads to non involvement. People may also assume that other bystanders may be more qualified to help, such as being a doctor or police officer, and their intervention would thus be unneeded. People may also fear losing face in front of the other bystanders, being superseded by a superior helper, offering unwanted assistance, or the legal consequences of offering inferior and possibly dangerous assistance. Another explanation is that bystanders monitor the reactions of other people in an emergency situation to see if others think that it is necessary to intervene. Since others are doing exactly the same, that is, non intervention, everyone concludes from the inaction of others that other people do not think that help is needed.

Not all of us are like that. I remember about 40 years ago, I and a friend were driving eastward on Highway 401 about a 150 kilometres east of Toronto when we witnessed a small vehicle flip over and land in the grassy median. We and others ran to the vehicle. The three women in the car had been thrown out of the vehicle during the crash and were lying on the grass.

My friend went to one of the women and I went to another. None of the bystanders went to the third women. I looked at a man who was standing next to the one I was caring for and asked, “What’s your name?” He gave it and I said to him, “Go to that woman over there and do what you can for her.” That’s when he decided to act. I saw another man standing nearby. I asked,” Is that your car over there?” He replied that it was. I then said in a harsh voice. “Approximately two kilometres further east of us is a gas station and restaurant. Drive there and call the police and get them to call an ambulance.” The man just stood there. I walked to his car, copied down his plate number and then returned. He asked me what I was doing and I replied,
“If any of these women die, I will contact the news media and tell them how you stood by and watched this woman die rather than call the police. Your name and inaction will become public all over Canada. You will be referred to later as the years go by as the asshole who wanted to watch a woman die rather than call the police so that she could be saved.” He responded with, “OK! OK! I’m going. I will call the police.” And call them he did. He also came back to confirm that he had called the police.

To counter the bystander effect when you are the victim, a proven recommendation is to pick a specific person in the crowd to appeal to for help rather than appealing to the larger group generally. If on the other hand you are the only person reacting to an emergency, point directly to a specific bystander and give that person a specific task such as, "You! Call the police." A person given such direct instructions will generally follow your instructions because now he or she is no longer a bystander but instead the person is a participant in doing something for the person in need of help.

In many cases, unless you make a demand upon a bystander to do something, the bystander will just stand there and stare.

Now you may ask, “Why didn’t I call the police myself?” The reason is; the woman I was caring for was conscious and begged me not to leave her. I decided that for her peace of mind, it would be better if I remained with her so that someone else could call the police.

Solitary individuals will typically intervene if another person is in need of help: this is known as bystander intervention. However, researchers were surprised to find that help is less likely to be given if more people are present. In some situations, a large group of bystanders may fail to help a person who obviously needs help. This is one of the reasons why you should make quick friends when you are traveling. For example, if you suddenly have a heart attack and pass out, and you have had conversations with someone close by previously to the attack, that person is more likely to give you some assistance than if you hadn’t conversed with him or her previously.

Of course, that isn’t always the case and I speak from personal experience. One day in 1999, I had just finished representing a client at his trial in the Old City Hall in Toronto when just as I was walking down the steps of the main entrance of the building, I suddenly felt faint and my legs buckled under me and I fell to the ground. My heart was dangerously weak at that time. I had a heart attack three weeks later which resulted in me having heart surgery so one can appreciate why I was pretty weak when I fell to the ground. Suddenly three strangers rushed to me and brought me to my feet and guided me to the steps where I could rest. A couple of years later, I was at the airport in Vancouver and I tripped and fell to the floor. Instantly several strangers came to my aid and helped me to my feet and walked me to a seat at a table.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that years ago I was informed by a client of mine that his elderly father had been walking down the street and fell to the ground. The man’s tenant; a medical doctor was walking just behind him. When the elderly man called to him for assistance, the doctor ignored him and just kept walking down the street, leaving the elderly man flat on his back in the snow.

Obviously, there are people who have no empathy for other human beings no matter what their position in life is.

What should you do if you witness a crime when the victim in danger? Your rushing to the rescue may save the victim – or may instead get you killed like some valiant people in the past have been killed. A less risky and possibly more effective strategy for outdoor safety in a populated area is to make lots of noise. Keep a safe distance, yet keep the criminal in sight (in the case of kidnapping), and yell repeatedly for someone to call the cops while pointing at the crime scene. Obviously, if you have a cell phone, call the police.

For outdoor safety, if you’re in your car, blow the horn and flash the lights. Perhaps ram into the car of a kidnapper (at a very slow speed) to prevent him from leaving with the victim. However, if the criminal is fleeing without a victim – let him get away, but try to get his license plate number and call the police. Let them deal with the inherent risk of chasing and capturing the criminal.

If you are inside your home or apartment and don’t want to go outside because you are afraid, that’s OK but at least have the decency and common sense to call the police. And most importantly, don’t presume that someone else has called the police.

I think Albert Einstein summed up his feelings on this issue far better that I could. He said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of people who are evil, but because the people who are in it don’t do anything about it.”

It is shameful that ordinary citizens when confronted with extraordinary events would rather sit or stand around with their fingers up their arses than lift a finger to help someone in need. All they have to do is dial 911 with that finger and that by itself shows that they have some empathy for their fellow human beings even if that is all they do to help the person who has called out to him or her for help.