I agree, personally in that situation, I would phone the police. Granted, 95% of the time, nothing happens. That is the problem of today's society - a lot of this shite people can get away with.
Different if there is a big fight going on, but I'm talking about these kind of things i.e. 3 chavs attacking an old lady. Now if you don't step in, she will possibly die and you'll walk away and regret it for the rest of your life. Or you can jump in, catch them unexpected, beat them until they cannot attack anymore. Then there is the old "Get beaten yourself, or even stabbed". But I'll always take that risk, why? I've been in situations where people have watched me getting attacked, but do nothing. There is a vid on the internet of someone stabbing a woman, and about 10 people watching, now 10 people vs 1 person with a knife = knife has no chance. The reason why loads of people attack others is because they know no one is going to step in, fact. But if people knew others would stand up for one another, no attacks would take place. That takes me to Egypt, everyone stands up for everyone, and if someone attacked someone in the street, I would garantuee the person who started it would be in hospital later that day.
As I said: you have to do something. One guy with a knife? You can throw your jacket around his arm --he's effectively disarmed for enough time to subdue him with some other people. But the important thing is to make sure you get those people on side by confronting the attacker from arm's length first. Interrupt his action, break the crowd's stupor and prompt them to action, then move in. But always be careful. Just because you're right doesn't make you invulnerable.
I think the big difference here is that I know what I am fully capable of, and I'll only interfere if I know I have a pretty high change of winning.
You see, when I read the first post, I imagined a preposterously funnily choreographed Little-Britain arrangement, which might make people laugh, but having seen DXR-13KE's post up of the vid, I have decided that there is nothing there to laugh at, and that it portrays a very serious point. I suppose a lot of it will have to be to do with the mood of the cinema goers. When you go to the cinema, young people tend to hyper-up a bit, faced with the prospect of nearly 2 hours of SFX, popcorn, fizz and friends. There'll be a lot of grinning, and loud conversations with louder punchlines. So naturally, when you glance at the screen, and see some random black and white scene where some dude is being attacked for no apparent reason whatsoever, I suppose the message that comes across might have a slapstick-randomness effect - like that happy slapping thing. I think a more graphical, and more detailed choreography of such a fight - with a charismatic wheelchair user and quite a hateable antagonist - would be more effective. And they might want to scrap the CCTV - go for face shots and ambiguous angles to capture the spur-of-the-moment event. I do understand why something like this would annoy you. I know I would be annoyed.
Well just a couple weeks ago in Calgary (Canada) 2 morons where beating up a woman in plan daylight with plenty people around. Nobody did a thing. But a passer by stopped his car and yelled at them to stop. What did they do, assaulted his pregnant wife and hospitalized him. Anyways I guess its a gang initiation or some **** around here. http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Platt_Michael/2008/06/03/5755316-sun.php My friend has also been assaulted at a train station with 50+ people and nobody did a thing. I can see why when you have gangs involved and then when you do go to court well now they have your name, followed by an address. Its the case of the wolf and sheep. Instead of the sheep just doing something and riding themselves of the problem we just think thank god it wasn't me this time. I mean how can we be so STUPID to let a fraction of a percent of people get away with this. If every time this happened we helped each other out they wouldn't prey on people out on our streets. That one moron should be afraid of the 50+ people not the 50+ people afraid of 1 moron.
I agree it's a problem, but be careful not to identify it as a feature of 'modern' society. People have been getting away with all sorts of crime and antisocial behaviour since time immemorial. We just know more about it now, and our standards have improved to boot.
