To those of you who said it would be dangerous to stop a child who was in the process of assaulting someone, I give you a big fat :dubious: . I hope I don’t have to depend on you for anything. I’m shocked that any of you think that would be the appropriate response. Ever.
Is it possible that if someone did pull the girl off of the victim, that they themselves might get sued? I’m not saying this is a reason not to do so, just trying to find out the likelyhood of such a thing. Considering the child is fucked up in the head to begin with, it’s likely that whatever she has that is considered a parent, might go lawyer shopping if anyone touched their precious little hellion of a daughter.
Don’t worry, I don’t intend for you have have to depend on me for anything. Ever. It’s not the physical risk that bothers me.
Pluperfect subjunctive works as a grammatical concept, by the way, although it is orthographically indistinguishable from the pluperfect indicative in English (but is distinct in Latin). Consider the sentence:
“Caesar, knowing that for his attack to succeed it is vital that Pompey have not fortified his position, sends out scouts to see.” A nice clear subjunctive! Now put the sentence into the past historic tense:
“Caesar, knowing that for his attack to succeed it was vital that Pompey had not fortified his position, sent out scouts to see.” That pluperfect looks indicative, but it would be subjunctive in a language richer in conjugations.
I wonder why only the ten year old was arrested. I’m guessing that these people are related, since a 10 year old, a 14 year old, a 16 year old, and a 20 year old isn’t exactly a a group you’d typically find hanging out socially.
$20 says that’s what’s been described as a “girl gang” will turn out to simply be an exceptionally trashy and dysfunctional family.
Because they are! Yeah, I know… bad, bad… but somehow I just can’t get mad at those kids.
I work in a juvenile detention facility.
I’ve seen one thirteen year old girl need four trained adults to properly restrain her (just last week, as a matter of fact.) She’s not a big girl by any means, I’d say average for her age. As it was, she did damage. Charges pending, can’t say too much. Just because someone is small to you, doesn’t mean you will be able to stop them when they’re angry.
I realize that it’s easy to think you can restrain a 10 year old or a 14 year old girl but the reality is you’re probably going to get hurt. It’s possible you can stop them from attacking the other person. And then again,it might just enrage them even more and maybe the kids will stop assaulting the other person and go for you.
I don’t know what the best solution in this situation is. Standing by and watching someone get the shit beaten out of them seems so very wrong, but I don’t know that trying to stop the assailants is the right one.
You can get sued for looking at someone crosseyed. But that doesn’t mean a court would find you at fault. There are laws that protect Good Samaritans. This cite, while not very detailed, says that rescuers are provided immunity in Massachusetts. http://www.momsteam.com/alpha/features/cardiac_awareness_center/good_samaritan_laws.shtml
It looks like the woman needed rescuing, to me.
Now…if your version of rescue is to club the kid over the head with a POS kiosk, that might be a different story. But I find it hard to believe a store full of people couldn’t have somehow restrained those kids and provided some kind of aid to the victim.
Like that’s going to help in the environment we’re living in now. I hate to say it, but I’d also be one of those bystanders that will sit back and do nothing. Today if you look a 10 year old girl the wrong way, you’re going to end up as a registered sex offender, no matter what the situation may be.
Article says it got started when the victim bumped into one of them and wouldn’t apologize. Somehow, I don’t think the assailants were sedately strolling through the aisles, chatting quietly and making room for others.
Heck, spray 'em in the face with deodorant spray, air freshener, breath spray, or hairspray. (Depending on how vicious the attackers are I might even use a spray cleaner set on stream. Of course I’d be calling medical care for them ASAP too. Don’t want to permanently blind 'em, just disable 'em.) Trip 'em. Do something to stop them seriously maiming or killing another.
Would I try to physically take on an adult, a teenager and a child at the same time? No.
Giraffe, Thanks and sorry. I put NSFW in the title but I see now it’s not as prominent as it could be.
In my local Target, an incident like this could have happened in any one of a number of its crowded aisles and I could have heard the woman’s cries and been hard-pressed to *find *her, let alone help her. I’m thinking particularly of the women’s apparel department near the purses. :dubious:
Everyone is also focusing on the 10-year-old specified in the headlines. The others involved in the incident were 14, 16, and 20… a 14yo girl could easily be adult-sized, so figure three adult women beating up a fourth with help from a 10yo. Would I have been screaming bloody murder and yelling for help and for them to get off the victim? Hell, yeah! Would I have been wading into the fray, considering I have no training in that sort of thing? Well, knowing myself as I do, probably yeah… I’d probably have at least pulled one of the smaller girls off her or started whacking at them all with my handbag like Ruth Buzzi.
I certainly hope I’d have remembered my first aid/CPR/psychiatric crisis training, which emphasised making sure help was on the way before jumping in to respond.
For what it is worth, this is the only Target that I know of that has it’s own internal holding cell.
Just saying…
To be fair, it is their responsibility to restrain her without harming her. If throat punches are allowed, the job gets a little easier.
True enough, and despite being bruised and bitten (she drew blood) our staff had to refrain from reciprocating.
It’s not an easy thing to deal with was my point, and you might end up in the hospital for your efforts, especially if you can’t convince anyone else around you to pitch in and help. In that kind of a situation it seems like things would develop so fast that for some people shock and disbelief would set in.
Does that make inaction right? No. It means the situation sucks all way round.
I do think the 10 year old will get charged, but I hope they catch the others.
In our facility the youngest we take is 10.
Those of you who are so hesitant to get involved, claiming your intentions would be misconstrued, does the fact that this will be on the security cameras change your perspective at all? It’s not exactly going to be a he said/she said situation.
It’s not about intentions being misconstrued. If it gets to the point of the tapes even getting considered your life is severely impacted. Wounds heal, but you will be forever known as the guy who got accused of groping a ten year in target and got off on a technicality.
Is it really that way? Or do you just perceive that through what you see in the media? I ask because in my personal experience a man can get accused for doing something he DID do and everyone who knows him politely ignores it. I realize there are some highly publicized cases, but how does that stack up to the real world?
Then don’t try to restrain, subdue. Some confuse the terms. Medical personell and corrections may be required to avoid injuring their charges if at all possible, a bystander, not so much. Working in an amusement park for almost 10 years I was involved in breaking up countless fights and restraining many a stray 10-16 year old, boys and girls. Out of probably two dozen incidents where I forcibly restrained a female, never once did your concern come up. Bystanders IME are far more interested in seeing a little punk get detained and held responsible for his/her actions than making up huge stories to defend them.