Should I do anything about a potentially dead guy in front of my apartment?

[A.R.Cane]

@cazzle

Are the police that unreasonable over there? Obviously I live in a different society to the OP, but I’ve always found the police around here to be compassionate and helpful. Called to a scene as described in the OP, I can picture them determining if the man was in need of medical attention or if he was ok, and perhaps locking him up for a few hours to sleep it off if he was drunk, but I’d be shocked if they charged him with loitering. This could just be my inner-Pollyanna coming out, but my experiences with the police here have always been positive.

I’m reminded of a quiz I once took online that assessed your approach to personal safety. One of the questions was something like “If you were home alone and a stranger came to your door one night and told you their car had broken down, and asked to use your phone to call a friend for assistance, would you a) let them in or b) tell them to go away?” and obviously choosing the former meant that you were compassionate but lacked good personal safety sense while the latter meant you put your own safety ahead of helping others. Discussing it with my friends, I complained that I would do neither - I wanted an option c: get the number and make the phone call on behalf of person at the door. I see no need to sacrifice my personal safety for a stranger if I can help them while still protecting myself. In my opinion, calling 911 for the unconscious man was the option c for Rigmarole: it didn’t put him in a position where he might be in danger from the man should he turn out to be drugged up, unbalanced or violent, but it was better than walking away from helping someone who clearly looked like they were in danger. How could he know the man was in danger? Well, as a general rule of thumb I think being unable to tell if you’re looking at a living person or a corpse is a pretty good indicator that something is wrong.

Being charged with loitering would suck, but I personally would choose it over a cold and lonely death in the street.

The LAPD is a much smaller force, as a percentage of population, than you would find in most large U.S. cities. As a result they have long had a reputation for agressiveness. There have been numerous cases of brutallity leveled against the dept. over the years, some w/ a great deal of publicity and followed by departmental shakeups. I don’t know if the situation has improved in recent years, or not. I’ve never lived in L.A., but I’ve nvisited there hundreds of times, but I’ve never had an encounter w/ the LAPD.

[Kythereia]

@Rigamarole

Well, I truly didn’t know the response was going to be so heated. I’m really so used to the bums passed out thing that this incident really only seemed mildly out of the ordinary, and I did actually want opinions. Like I’ve said before, I live in a scary neighborhood and I don’t like messing with people who I don’t need to be messing with.

But I thank everyone for their point of view, and I want to at least say that in retrospect, I think a simple 911 call would have been for the best, even though he may very well not have appreciated it. This particular bum seems to have went on his merry way, but I certainly will remember this one for next time.

Thank you for saying this. You are, in fact, a good egg.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Shoshana

Yes, you’ve identified the fallacy in moral choices presented as either/or: IRL, we’re often able to develop a better choice than those given as our only options.

When I taught in an Orthodox Jewish high school, one of the kids asked me if I’d rather be a happy pig or an unhappy philosopher. I said that I’d rather be a happy philosopher. He indignantly told me that that wasn’t one of my choices, and I told him that I rejected the terms of his question. He couldn’t let it go, and kept following me around telling me I had to choose one of his options, and could never seem to wrap his head around the idea that I didn’t think his question was a reflection of reality.

You are a goat, he is a sheep. I mean that in a very nice way (for you, anyway).

(Think I’ll use my sig here.)

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

I think it’s time to close this thread. No more can be said or done.

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@Rigamarole

But I thank everyone for their point of view, and I want to at least say that in retrospect, I think a simple 911 call would have been for the best, even though he may very well not have appreciated it. This particular bum seems to have went on his merry way, but I certainly will remember this one for next time.

Good for you!! I’m glad that you got something out of this.

As I was thinking about it, I was trying to think of additional options for you to consider should this arise again. Perhaps you’ve already considered and discarded these ideas, but I thought I’d throw them out anyway.

One thought I had was that you could contact your apartment manager to see if they could help. After all, it is their property and they should care what happens to it. In addition, most apartments have maintenance service workers that could be called upon also. If you call and your apartment manager doesn’t care, at least that would give you some indication about the severity of the situation.

If you own the apartment and there is no manager, perhaps you could talk to a neighbor and ask their help.

Anyway, just some thoughts for the future (hopefully not on New Year’s day). I’m glad it all worked out in the end.