I once picked up a very disheveled woman who was hitchhiking in Providence. I won’t get into all the detail here but she clearly was Not Okay. I asked her at one point during the ride whether she had talked to a doctor about a prescription for one of her mental health problems, and she said, “Oh, yes,” and showed me a bottle of Trazadone. I asked how they worked for her and she said, “Really good. Too good.” When I pursued this she told me that they made her sleep very soundly and that that was not a good idea in a shelter or park, or you were much more vulnerable to being ripped off, assaulted, or too slow to take care of yourself, so she didn’t take them. This was an enormously important conversation for me as an earnest young therapist-in-training and I gave her $40, which she may or may not have used in a way that I’d approve of, and which at that time was all of my grocery money for the month. I still consider the risk of picking her up to be worth having taken, and the $40 a cheap payment for the insight, which was that individual needs are important and should be addressed, but without change in the social service infrastructure, injustice, oppression, and lack of opportunity will be perpetuated. I try to balance both of these factors in the sorts of circumstances we’re discussing. I don’t alwayus do as well as I’d like, but I think I hold myself to a higher standard of bravery and vulnerability in service to others than I did before that afternoon.
I’ve lived in the Bay Area for all of my almost 31 years. There are bums all over the damn place, and a fair number of them are crazy or even dangerous. I try to avoid the aggressive ones, but if I saw someone lying under a sprinkler I fucking well would see if they were OK. Normal sleeping bum behavior includes lying under a pile of blankets in a doorway or under an overpass, not slumping across a lawn in a pool of cold water. Around here it sometimes dips below freezing, and even if it doesn’t the damp ocean air is much more chilling than the temperature would suggest. Even if someone is a crazy, strung out dope fiend, and that’s by no means guaranteed, it doesn’t mean they deserve to be left to die because no one can be bothered to kick their shoe and see if they say anything.
I’m late to the party and this is maybe my third post ever in the Pit, but damn. It doesn’t matter if he’s a bum or not, the person is still a human fucking being. I can understand if you didn’t want to hassle him or you might have thought he had a rough night, but you sure didn’t sound like it at the beginning. Either you’ve got some soul searching to do or you need to simply just accept the fact that you did this.
I’m curious as to inquire if you realize why everyone’s up in arms over this.
Additionally, I won’t go so far as to call you human waste made incarnate because I don’t know you all that well. I do know that this was a bad judgement call (to say the least).
A year or two back I was walking home at night through the mean(ish) streets, when I came across a guy lying on the street. It was at an intersection, and traffic was light and slow. But instead of stopping - cars slowed, and then just ran over this guy’s arm. It seemed like once the first car made the decision to drive on, everyone else just went into zombie mode, and followed. I stepped out into the intersection - stopped the traffic, called an ambulance etc.
OK, so I’m a morally fabulous Human Being. Well, maybe not… I walk past this same intersection pretty frequently, and there are always a bunch of homeless guys sleeping under cardboard boxes about twenty feet away, rain or shine, or icy wind. I don’t think I’ve ever checked on these guys. Sure, I get a little pinch in my heart when I see them lying there, but somehow they have become part of ‘normal’, so no action is required. I like to think that the little ‘heart-pinch’ makes me a moral person, but that’s basically sentimental bullshit, like crying in a movie.
I guess it takes a varying amount of distress or extreme circumstances to shock different people into action.
So, what am I trying to say here ? There were a bunch of nice regular people driving those cars over that guy in the street, and a bunch of nice regular people (including me) ignoring the guys under the cardboard boxes. When I see how nice regular people behave in real life, I’m a little suspicious that everybody’s so righteous in SDMBland. Kudos to those who take real life action to help.
Yeah I agree we should not get into an ethical pissing contest. But the real issue in this thread is not the level of commitment people have to living in harmony with their fellow man and the earth or its creatures. It’s about calling for help when you think there is a possibility that a man is dead or dying on your lawn. That does not require life changing commitment to a cause. It requires a bit of care, and a phone.
Deciding to buy a coke even though they oppress workers in Latin America and have created conditions in which labor organizers have been killed? Well there are millions of other coked being bought today, so I could argue that mine won’t make a difference.
Finding that Nike makes the best running shoes for your foot condition, but hesitating because they were probably made by a child in a sweatshop in Indonesia, I can understand. Again you may decide to buy them anyway, rightly or wrongly, because of the millions of other who will as well, and your purchase will make no difference to that child laboring 16 hours a day.
Don’t get me wrong, if everyone made ethical decisions in their purchasing, THAT would make an impact, and it is an impact I feel we should strive for.
But choosing to not help a person who could be dead or dying as you walk by, that directly impacts a person. It is not the collective effortd of the consumersphere coalescing to oppress a worker, it is an idividual not seeing a fellow man as worthy of care.
The difference is that the guy in the street was in immediate danger. The people under the boxes are not. Sprinkler Guy was potentially in immediate danger as well. That’s why Rigamarole has been getting piled on.
I think it would depend on the degree of urgency in the person’s apparent level of distress. It’s one thing they’re just wandering around with schizo affective disorder or aphasia or some other mental illness that just makes them appear crazy. There are tons of those and while they may not be able to function in any “normal” society (as relates to what’s normal to them) most of them can seem to survive to one degree or another. Certainly they could use help and treatment, but AFAIK there aren’t many (any?) places in North America (or most of the rest of the developed world) that can legally detain, commit or administer treatment of any kind to a mentally ill person against their will if it is deemed that their illness does not pose a significant threat to themselves or others.
Now, if a homeless man (or anyone, really) is on the ground convulsing or appearing to be passed out or dead in any setting where it would strike me as unusual (the middle of the sidewalk, someone’s lawn, or anywhere you don’t usually find people in positions people don’t usually assume voluntarily) then I’d certainly err on the side of caution and dial 911. At worst I’ll have inconvenienced someone, maybe even annoyed them. To that I say, too damn bad. Far better that I piss someone off and accomplish nothing than do nothing and allow someone to die. I don’t have to try and move them – hell, having no medical training whatsoever I wouldn’t dare for fear that I’d do more harm than good – I just have to get in touch with those who do have the training and can ascertain the person’s condition and take appropriate action.
By way of a brief background, I grew up in Toronto, Ontario. I spent a great deal of time in the heart of the downtown core, so I’ve had lots of time to become inured to the presence of homeless on the streets. This is a separate issue, though, as we’re not talking about stopping to offer a handout. We’re talking about stopping to help out someone who may very well be in some kind of serious distress requiring medical assistance. This doesn’t (or anyway shouldn’t) require that one first evaluate their place in society before deciding on what course of action to take.
My little brother was in a very serious accident two months ago. My dad happened to be in New York for business and a 40th highschool reunion, and my phone call caught him stepping out of Grand Central Station. He listened carefully, told us he’d be home on the next flight out, hung up… and passed out from shock. On the sidewalk, on Park Avenue.
A woman passing by immediately stopped, laid him out comfortably and called 911. By the time the EMTs arrived, speeding up Park against traffic, he was already awake. They checked his pulse, gave hom an EKG, wrapped an elastic bandage around what they assumed was a sprained ankle (he found out a week later it was actually broken), tried to convince him to go to a hospital, and weny on their way. The woman stuck around throughout the whole thing.
Now, if dad had looked more like a homeless guy and less like a 50-something lawyer with a strong resemblence to Richard Gere, maybe no-one would have hekped him. I don’t know. But the fact of the matter is that someone gave a damn. God knows what would have happened if they didn’t.
There’s a difference between not calling the cops because you saw a sleeping guy wrapped up in a blanket or under a cardboard box, or even on a parkbench. Fact is, there are homeless guys, and they have to sleep somewhere sometime. Rousting out every guy sleeping outdoors isn’t doing them any favors.
But sprawled on the grass under a sprinkler is a different story. Heck, even sprawled on the grass I could imagine myself shaking my head and passing on by. But seriously, getting sprayed by water, whether rain or sprinkler, that’s a life-threatening situation, even for someone in good health.
Rigamarole acted correctly even if some think not rightly.
I’ve made the mistake of calling the police, several times because I’m a slow learner. Each time I’ve been sorry. For instance the time I was working for a friend out of town and staying at the construction site and noticed a trailer, not from one of the sub-contractors, that had been broken into. My only reward for the call-in was threats from the cops. Or the time a friend’s ex-girlfriend started breaking my windows while dragging a case of beer around with her and the cops didn’t arrest her but did try to storm into my apartment. I could go on with example after example.
I will never, ever, ever again call the cops, no matter what crime or personal plight I see.
I live for the day I see a cop who needs help.
“A gun in hand is better than a cop on the phone any day.”
Living in the heart of the panhandler state I totally agree with his position of detactment from any involvement with a passed out bum.
If you dial 911 and report a person in need of medical assistance in my neighborhood an ambulance is dispatched. Police are only invoved if, you know, a crime might have been committed. The same number handles medical, fire, and police emergencies.
How do you know he was a bum? What does bsing a bum have to do with it? **Rigamarole **thought he might have been dead, or dying, not passed out. Where the fuck do you find the hubris to elevate yourself above your fellow man? Why should anyone bother to help you if circumstances caused you to be passed out on the sidewalk? Do you think it can’t happen to you, you gigantic asswipe?
If you dial 911 and report a person in need of medical assistance in my neighborhood an ambulance is dispatched. Police are only invoved if, you know, a crime might have been committed. The same number handles medical, fire, and police emergencies.
How do you know he was a bum? What does being a bum have to do with it? **Rigamarole **thought he might have been dead, or dying, not passed out. Where the fuck do you find the hubris to elevate yourself above your fellow man? Why should anyone bother to help you if circumstances caused you to be passed out on the sidewalk? Do you think it can’t happen to you, you gigantic asswipe?
