Am I a cringing coward or a responsible father and husband?

Great Debates
1

The other Saturday night I was up late on the net while my wife and kids were all in bed asleep. I gradually became aware of raised voices, an argument or something going on outside. The argument got louder and louder until I could hear exactly what was being said.

I was intrigued. This wasn’t something that normally occurs where I live and so I went to our upstairs hall window and peered out. There was 2 guys and 2 girls staggering along the street a few houses down from ours. One of the guys (20-30) was shouting and screaming at one of the girls. He was accusing her of shagging some other guy.

So, there I am, enjoying the entertainment, when they get level with my house. Right at the end of my garden path. They stop. The swearing/shouting is by this time almost deafening. Then he tries to hit her. I mean real swings, no messing around. I thought, whoa, this is not good, but luckily the other guy and girl, sort of fend him off and keep him just out of reach.

I relax again and watch the show. By now I am joined by Mrs Legion, who as been woken up by all the commotion. Just then I notice a couple of kids, about 13-14 years old. They are walking along the other side of the street towards the disturbance. All the while, this guy is still trying to attack this girl but is still being fended off.

As these two kids get nearly level with the ruckus, they cross the road. I remember thinking Oh no, don’t do that, stay on the OTHER side of the road. As they get about level with the ruckus, the guy who wants to hit his girlfriend turns round and hits one of these poor kids with perfect right hook to the chin. The kid takes off, I swear it, he took off and landed in the middle of the road. I HEARD the sound his head made as he landed. He was obviously unconscious and seriously hurt.

My wife and I were both stunned. We couldn’t believe what we had just witnessed. Before we recovered from our shock, the guy who hit the kid walked over to him and STAMPED on the kids face! Jesus Christ, he just lifted his foot and stomped down with all his force on the unconscious kids face!

My wife and I couldn’t believe what we had just seen! It took a second or two before we could react. By then the attackers mate had dragged him off the kid and was calming him down. I had instinctively reached for the front door, I suppose to go out there and protect the kid, but my wife pulled me back. She didn’t want me to get involved, seeing as they would know exactly where we lived etc. I let her stop me and just called the police and an ambulance.

What’s bugging me is that I know I didn’t want to go out there and face this nutcase. My move for the door, what a joke, I KNEW my wife would stop me. I feel like such a fraud.

P.S. The paramedics turned up and took the kid to hospital. The cops turned up and did fuck all to anyone, despite my call - in which you have to give your name and address - about being a witness. A women at work has a son who is a local policeman. I asked her about the kid and what was going on in the investigation. She said her son told her that the kid will recover and “what investigation. The kid is a known drug dealer/thief and he got what was coming to him”.

Well, that doesn’t lessen my feelings of self loathing. I can’t get it out of my head. He stomped on that poor kids face!

2

You’re the kind of guy who will be"enjoying the entertainment" or sit back to '“relax again and watch the show” while one person is threatening another.

You should have at least turned on your porch light or something to let them know there was a possiblity of discovery. That usually makes people behave a little better.

3

This seems more like a IMHO topic, but here goes.

You called the police. That was a good start.

You might have called out, without revealing your location. Just knowing that someone else is watching will usually give a perp pause. You also could have loudly announced that the police had been called. I’d have done that the first second a hand was raised against one of the women.

There’s not a lot more that you could have done. Being a father and husband, you were smart to not get directly involved.

4

First off I am only 20 so keep that lack of life experance in mind when reading this. I think the answer depends on your first fear at the thought of going out there… Was it self concern or concern for your family? If it was self concern and then concern for your family as additional support for your choice. Then I think you would be a coward. However staying inside was the safest thing you could for your family. You might have put your family and your self in jeopardy by going outside. Calling the cops and an ambulance was the best I think you could have done. Based on my own belief in God and the Bible I don’t think you should judge your self as your struggling with. Instead if you think you acted in cowardice you should forgive your self an aspire to do better next time.

5

Another IMHO…

I’m not going to berate anyone for behaving this way, as it’s pretty typical… but I would like to lament the death of ‘community involvement’ in our society. If that argument was loud enough to wake your wife, then more than a few of your neighbors within earshot should have been out on their front porch preventing this person from being hurt, whether he ‘deserved’ it or not I don’t know. But in this scenario wouldn’t there by less threat of retaliation? Which house will he retaliate against? We’re no longer vigilant for ourselves becasue we’ve been taught to rely on police, and let’s face it, things don’t seem to be improving any.

I’m not advocating vigilantism, but it seems that this type of community spirit and activism might deter this type of behavior from getting out of hand, and who knows what other benefits would come of it?

6

We did speak to our neighbours about what happened and it turns out that most of them, like myself, watched the proceedings from the anonymity of their twitching curtains.

I think they, like myself, watched events unfold as if it where happening on Jerry Springer or something. None of us really expected it to take the sudden, sickening violent turn that it did.

Maybe that’s what has frightened me the most. In my younger days, violence was always preceded by all sorts of posturing, threats and whatever. What we witnessed that night though was so sudden, so unprovoked, so senseless, it left one feeling absolutely helpless in the face of it and with no reliable “early warning” system to predict it!

7

Keep in mind that I am 19 with no children or no life, I mean wife, but I would of been out there fighting the guy if he was hitting the women. Or at least trying to get him off of her. Especially once he hit the kid and then knocked him down. Then again I don’t have children or anything like that to worry about. I would rather have him come back and kill me knowing I did the thing that I felt was right than live the rest of my life feeling like a coward.

You honestly probably did the best thing you could of done with the situation you had. You had more than just yourself to think about.

8

Here’s MHO, as others have noted:

You’re first responsibility is to your family. Can’t argue with your instinct to protect them. You called the police, which is absoltuely the right thing to do, even before trying to get yourself involved. As someone else mentioned, you probably could’ve turned on a light or even yelled out something like “knok it off out there!” without getting your family “involved”. But keep in mind that your life experience so far might not have prepared you for some split second thinking under these kinds of conditions. Chalk it up to experience, learn from it, and know that you can probably do better next time.

9

I am large and quite dangerous if I choose to be, but there is no way in hell I would be leaving my house or apartment to get into a scrum with drunks fighting with each other on the street outside unless it looked like someone was going to be mortally injured. The attack on the kid crossed the line, however, and like you I would have been going for the door with a baseball bat, or whatever I could grab, to stop the guy from abusing the kid, and and if I was married my wife would probably have tried to stop me (for quite practical reasons).

You are not a coward. Your scenario is entirely typical and understandable.

10

Astro is correct. Midnight drunks deserve a phone call to the police. You owe your allegiance to your family. I’ve been in this situation myself and I’ve come to the conclusion that it would have to evolve to the point where I would be willing to kill someone. The likelyhood of retaliation is high and it would involve your family.

The only response that you might have done, MIGHT, would be to grab a gun or a bat and stand between the kid and the attacker. Exchange no words, just stand there. The lack of confrontation would likely confuse the attacker for a short period of time. If you were successful in fending off the attack through force, you stand a chance of losing everything in a lawsuit.

when I was in high school I suffered many a couple of fat lips for defending the little guy. Not to mention standing up for myself. This is different. The stakes are higher, your family is involved, and the people on the street are the keepers of their own company.

11

If you stopped from going outside because you did not want to risk getting hurt, then I’d say you were a coward. If you stopped because you getting hurt could endanger your family, then I say no, you did the right thing.

12

The problem is the usual dilemma of juggling the desire to help an innocent vs. the desire to protect yourself. It’s understandable that you would be hesitant – you don’t know any of the folks involved, you don’t know if the loudmouthed attacker was armed, you don’t know anything other than the brief glimpses you saw.

Given that, IMO the worst thing you could have done was nothing, and the ideal thing you could have done was restrain the attacker. Calling the cops was a good-but-less-than-ideal thing, and the suggestions from other folks – turning on the lights, making your presence known, etc. – are also various degress of good-but-less-than-ideal. Still, given how little you knew about the folks involved, I don’t think you could be faulted for not charging into the street with nary a thought for your own safety.

Still… I’m reminded uneasily of Kitty Genovese, who was raped and murdered while 37 neighbors watched on and did nothing. While I’m glad your situation wasn’t as dire, it’s still a chilling reminder of how easily we can dissuade ourselves from doing the right thing.

13

Not going outside to avoid getting hurt is not the cowardly thing to do, it’s the right thing to do for everybody’s sake. Jumping into conflict that you are not directly involved with just makes situations escalate.

Legion, calling the cops and letting them deal with it was the right thing to do. I feel for you that you had to witness that kid getting hurt but don’t torture yourself with it. By the sound of it, it would’ve happened whether you jumped in or not.

14

So, there were six violent, drunken, thieves and/or drug dealers (who may have also been armed) in the street and you feel like you should have put yourself in the middle of it. Bullshit, that doesn’t make you a coward.

**IF you decide to get physically involved in a situation like this then you better be prepared to do whatever is required.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Next time turn on the lights and call the police. That would’ve been YOU in the hospital and possibly your wife too. She wouldn’t have hid in the house while they were beating your ass.

They might have even followed you back into your house and then what?

As for myself, I live out in the country. A shotgun blast as fair warning is my response.
(after I turn on the porch light of course) :wink:

15

If I had a bat or other weapon that would give me the upper hand, I would have definitely had that ready and waiting. I would have called the police the instant I noticed things were getting rough out there. I would’ve told them the police were on the way. It would be hard to stay inside and not react to somebody possibly getting beaten to death. I can assure you that if I saw a man beating a woman in the street, I would try to come to her defense. A call to the cops would accomplish nothing if she is laying there dead by the time they show up. If I was going to interfere, it would be because I thought lives were on the line and I had a chance to save a life. I would be prepared to do whatever it takes. If you aren’t committed to going for broke, you’d best not get involved.

As for the police doing fuck all, it seems like their modus operandi everywhere these days. They won’t do one thing more than they have to, and any time they can cut corners they are going to do it. A few times over the past couple of years family members have had hundreds of dollars worth of electronics ripped off, and not once did the police even bother to come to the scene. When my wife and I were victims of a drunk doing a hit-and-run, we were treated like we were the criminals.

16

I agree totally with cynicismkills and was just coming to post as rjung did about Kitty Genovese.

As it stands at the moment, you have to risk your safety to protect someone else. If people had a community spirit and stood up when people were being attacked, it wouldn’t be nearly as much of a risk coz safety in numbers.

I reckon it would be a good idea to talk with your neighbours about what you guys will do if anything bad happens in your street again. Were they all there waiting for someone else to make a move? Would they have followed you out or no?

17

I know it wasn’t one of the girls in this case. Just clearing that up before somebody jumps on that point. :slight_smile:

18

Well, drunk people are very dangerous in a fight. Going out there without a weapon wouldn’t be courageous, it would be stupid. Once someone gets to the point of stumbling around drunkenly it’s going to be very hard, first of all, to reason with them, and secondly, to disable them without inflicting serious injury.

Some people might want to play the hero in this situation, but that just seems like it would create trouble. If you were forced to beat the man to a point where he was rendered harmless, you would be risking serious legal repercussions. The cops might have arrested you, instead of doing nothing at all.

19

I don’t think you were a coward,** Legion**. You had just seen a man turn round and hit a boy, unprovoked, who had just walked up to him. What’s to make you think he won’t do worse to you?

When I was 16 I saw some teenagers throwing rocks at an old man, spitting at him and threatening to do worse. I walked the old man into the town centre where he’d be safe, then turned back and went on to where I was going (which funnily enough happened to be the Church youth group, how good do I sound!) The kids - two girls of about 14, one boy of about twelve, and a little boy of about eight, then followed me and eventually caught up with me and beat me up.

The little boy was worst, because I felt unable to hit him back, and he was a vicious little thing. The ringleader had that bizarre strength some psychotics seem to, and she picked me up by my throat and threatened to impale me on a spiked fence. I called for help several times, and when a man came walking past, ran to him for help, but he pushed me off and went on his way. (He didn’t call the police, either).

Sometimes if you step in to protect a stranger you will get hurt, and if you’d be revealing where you and your family live then you’re in extra danger. In any case, unless you’re built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, what could you reasonably do? You’d just be giving him another face to stamp on.

The police’s apathy is reprehensible. It doesn’t matter if the boy was a ‘known drug dealer;’ in the situation you describe, he was the victim.

20

How bad has socioty degraded when possible legal consequances prevent you from stopping some drunk from beating up a kid?

Anyway you would not have had to beat the drunk into submission, just held him off long enough for the kid to get away. People have posted some other good ideas too. Doing stuff to let the drunk know he is not alone, organizing your naihbors so if it happens in the future everyone will go out and make use of safety in numbers, ect all good ideas. mounting a fake secuirty camera on a poll outside might discourage this kind of thin the future.