Homeless Man Left To Die In NYC

[Serafina]

Genovese came home, got stabbed outside her apartment, raped, and lay dieing for half an hour as none of her neighbours who heard the attack bothered to call the police or ambulance.

She was attacked at 3:15 in the morning. And a neighbor did call the police- her body was picked up an hour later.

Are you dismissing the bystander effect because Genovese was murdered at 3 in the morning?

I am well aware of the bystander effect.

However, your comparision is invalid and the bystander effect was NOT an issue here - the moment you interact with the scene, you stop being a bystander. That's why victims in such situations are supposed to directly adress people instead of just crying "help" to no one specific.

And of course, the bystander effect is no excuse - it's your decision wether you do something or not. Any human can shake it off completely on his own. A human who doesn't do that is no less responsible.

[Broomstick]

Culturally we've been bred and raised to believe that we shouldn't get involved in other people's business because doing so means getting sued somewhere down the road. That and bystander effect did this I guess.

Don't you any good samaritan laws?

Yes, we do. Nonetheless, people are still terrified of being sued despite the protection of good samaratins under the law.

[Soontir C'boath]

Culturally we've been bred and raised to believe that we shouldn't get involved in other people's business because doing so means getting sued somewhere down the road. That and bystander effect did this I guess.

Don't you any good samaritan laws? In any event, wouldn't calling the appropriate authorities as opposed to you trying to help yourself especially if you have zero medical skills mean you don't get sued.

Yes, we do but people have misconceptions. From what I learned in CPR class, there are people who do think they may get sued if they try to help and fail.

What I am miffed from reading the article was the fact that people did called in but gave the wrong damn intersections.

I wouldn't want to live in Jamaica by the way especially South Jamaica. A friend lost some of his friends there.

[salm]

Meh, this has little to do with seeing the guy getting stabbed or falling over. I´ve whitnessed this several times now. Guy falls due to ice, alcohol or medical condition and people just walk past.

Can you go to jail in the US for denial of assistance?

[PeZook]

Congratulations, jcow. You are a better person than the vast majority of people.

I think education might make a difference. If you know about the Kitty Genovese case, or about even this poor guy in NYC, you might reconsider your own actions in the future. Unfortunately, somebody has to provide the lesson. And society appears to constantly need refreshers.

I was in a similar situation to jcow's (ended much worse, though) and Genovese was exactly what I thought about.

It was an older guy sitting on a bench at a bus stop. Me and my wife just arrived in Warsaw and were waiting for our bus. The guy was hunched over, and at first glance, looked like he was sleeping. We thought nothing of it, and the scary thing is: even when he started turning blue and fucking fluid poured out of his nose, we still hesitated to help, trying to rationalize the incident into something harmless.

I thought of the Genovese case then, and called an ambulance. The woman on the other end was a bitch, though, she wasted a good three minutes asking me if the guy wasn't just drunk, but that's besides the point: there was a good chance we'd have left the scene if we didn't know about the bystander effect.

Anyway, when I'm doing the post-mortem now, it's kind of scary how much resistance I showed to getting involved, even when it was completely obvious something was horribly, horribly wrong.

So I would tend to agree: knowing about the bystander effect probably helps a lot.

[Gaidin]

Can you go to jail in the US for denial of assistance?

At least where I live, no. Only EMTs and those with higher training and/or responsibilities via their jobs are required to give aid. For people not in those positions the only rule is that once you start giving aid you don't stop until emergency personnel take over.

[tim31]

I stopped the car en route home two weeks ago to render assistance to a cyclist whom, for all I know, might have been hit by the guy who was standing in front of his car, looking at the cyclist. For my effort my car was hit from behind by a girl who was tired, driving home from work/gym, and didn't see my hazard lights. The cyclist was fine, he just fell off his bike in the dark(on a road running through a forest). The bystander effect can kiss my arse. I will stop for you.

[salm]

Can you go to jail in the US for denial of assistance?

At least where I live, no. Only EMTs and those with higher training and/or responsibilities via their jobs are required to give aid. For people not in those positions the only rule is that once you start giving aid you don't stop until emergency personnel take over.

Interesting. Here you can get up to a year in jail for denial of assistance. Not sure how often it is enforced since i imagine that it´s pretty hard to prove in most cases.

[Serafina]

Interesting. Here you can get up to a year in jail for denial of assistance. Not sure how often it is enforced since i imagine that it´s pretty hard to prove in most cases.

To elaborate, you are at the very least required to call the police/an ambulance (obviously with your cellphone if you have one, but otherwise calling for help is also part of that duty).

IIRC, you are also required to perform first aid if you are trained in it - and everyone with a drivers license is required for such training. However, this is rarely enforced (again IIRC).

[Broomstick]

Can you go to jail in the US for denial of assistance?

No. In the US the law does not hold that you have a duty to help others.

This results in a situation where if you walk past and do nothing you are liable either criminally or civilly, but if you DO stop to help you might be - in the past there were people who tried to help others who were sued for their efforts. Thus, the passing of "good Samaritan" laws to relieve helpful passers-by of such liability... but people still fear being sued. Our system perversely rewards people for NOT getting involved, and may punish them for intervention.

[Agent Sorchus]

Can you go to jail in the US for denial of assistance?

At least where I live, no. Only EMTs and those with higher training and/or responsibilities via their jobs are required to give aid. For people not in those positions the only rule is that once you start giving aid you don't stop until emergency personnel take over.

Interesting. Here you can get up to a year in jail for denial of assistance. Not sure how often it is enforced since i imagine that it´s pretty hard to prove in most cases.

In Colorado you can be sued for only one of two things: By being an on duty medical professional and falling under malpractice law, or by offering aid and then leaving the scene. The first part is to protect off duty doctor's and other medical professionals, if off duty and they fuck up enough to normally be beholden to malpractice they don't have to worry. There is a small number of exceptions though to that. The second part is the part that most people don't understand and makes people unlikely to offer aid. The second part comes into play as soon as you offer aid, even if you are rebuffed you must stay till someone with equal or greater qualification comes to aid.

This is all massively misunderstood, until it is assumed that anyone that has any first aid training that fails to offer aid is responsible, when every person is given the option that to judge a scene to be too unsafe to offer aid. Firemen are the few people that have the least leeway in their judgment since they must go into places that no other medical responder must, and hence why they are paid that much more.

Serafina, I am certain that the aid requirements in Germany have a similar setup wherein if the scene is deemed too unsafe there is no lawful requirement to offer aid beyond calling it into the local emergency services.

[Serafina]

Serafina, I am certain that the aid requirements in Germany have a similar setup wherein if the scene is deemed too unsafe there is no lawful requirement to offer aid beyond calling it into the local emergency services.

Of course - that's why only those with first aid training are supposed to give first aid, and also because you are generally not held accountable if you do not do so even tough you are trained - after all, one who is to insecure to help is more likely to cause harm.

[salm]

IIRC, you are also required to perform first aid if you are trained in it - and everyone with a drivers license is required for such training. However, this is rarely enforced (again IIRC).

One must add that the first aid training you recieve during the procedure required to get your drivers license is totally useless.

[septesix]

I live in new york city, and on a average day I might pass by half a dozen homeless people either on the street, at the park, or in the subway station, or even on the train. They might be sitting, hunched down, or laying down. They might be exposed, or they might be covered in blanked or newspaper......

There simply is no way you can even possibly stop and look at all of them as you sit there. and most of them don't want you bothering them. And what if I call 911 and they arrive and it turned out (a vast majority of the time) the guy simply refuse to be helped? Or, what if I called and is required to stay on scene , thus delayed whatever urgent business I might otherwise be on?

After a while you simply don't even see them in your vision anymore.

I'm not saying that I'll not help, ever. IF I see an obvious sign like blood or other weird fluid coming out of them, then it's a pretty easy case to call an Ambulance. But if it's just one person there on the ground? what exactly am I suppose to do?

Beside, can you imagine if everyone in New York start calling it in? Pretty soon 911 will be so swamped that they cannot respond to any calls of actual emergency!

[eion]

Beside, can you imagine if everyone in New York start calling it in? Pretty soon 911 will be so swamped that they cannot respond to any calls of actual emergency!

If such a miraculous event occurred, the city would probably set up a new hotline like they did for municipal services non-emergency calls (311).

[rinachen]

Surely, you don't want the same thing to happen to you. If I do seem to find the situation to be an emergency, I wouldn't just stand there and pretend I did not see it. Most especially if I notice that no one's even bothered to check what's really going on.

[Serafina]

*snip*

No one's blaming anyone for not noticing a homeless person.
If it's sufficiently out of your (physical) field of view, then it's quite understandable that you don't notice it.

However, i DO blame the people who noticed it and then did nothing.

[ShadowDragon8685]

*snip*

No one's blaming anyone for not noticing a homeless person.
If it's sufficiently out of your (physical) field of view, then it's quite understandable that you don't notice it.

However, i DO blame the people who noticed it and then did nothing.

I think he was referring to out of mental field of view - most of us, sitting at our keyboards, have them in the bottom of our vision, but aren't looking at them; we tune them out, because we work better, type better, when we're not thinking about, let alone looking at, our keyboards.

(And now your WPM has gone down and you're watching the keys you're hitting and it's slowing you down and making you make mistakes. )

New Yorkers tune out people on the streets, is what he's saying.


Most people tune out things like that - on the highway, stopped cars. There's so many people driving, that you can easily assume that even if the stopped motorist doesn't have a cell phone of their own, someone has already called it in; and you're late for work, anyway; or at least, you might be if you stop...


I did. On the way in to work, in the middle of horrific rush hour traffic, I saw a couple of stopped cars. One was empty; the second had an orange placard on the back, and I wanted to stop, but there was another car in front of it, and I believed someone else had stopped to render aid. The third was an entire van full of young people, with tires out in back and sitting on the dividing rail. I pulled off, called the state cops. Getting back into the traffic was horrendous, I had to redline my engine and there was a bit of terror I was going to be hit, but it was worth it.


Going home was another story. The road's gloriously deserted at three in the morning. There's nothing more beautiful than looking in your rear-view and seeing nothing = no headlights, no street lights, no stars, no moon - nothing. But again, I saw a stopped car, and I couldn't even tell for sure if it was inhabited or not... But I didn't like the idea of leaving someone there; but I sure wasn't going to get out of my car in the middle of twisty bends in the road at three in the morning and stumble around in the dark. So I just called again.