What Would YOU do?

A little too close for comfort

 

Last night I was sitting on the couch twittering and watching the Nanny. It was about 11pm. TheCount was in the bedroom exercising and listening to music. All of a sudden I hear tires screeching. Being the forever nosey person I am, I run to the window. I see a car spun out in the street and two guys with bicycles standing on a corner. I immediately thought that the car and the bikes got into an accident. I'm looking to make sure everything is ok and the car pulls down the side street and stops. The driver gets out with something in his hand and walks over to the bike guys. One of the bike guys goes and grabs a huge stick. There were two other passengers in the car and they get out and stand by the car just watching. At this point I get a little worried and I really don't want all this going on outside my window. I call for TheCount while reaching for my phone to call the police if need be. The driver and one of the bike guys start fighting. I call 911- not because I was mad they were fighting, but because I wanted the police to come break it up so it wouldn't get any worse. As I'm talking to the 911 operator, one of the car passengers reaches in the car, grabs something and walks over- I told her- but I didn't see what he grabbed, could have been a cell phone for all I know. I made it clear that only 2 people were fighting, the other 3 were just watching. Being that I live in a really "good" town, the police were there super fast. Over the next hour I saw: sobriety tests, handcuffs, a car get impounded, and at least one person get arrested. A total of 10 police cars ended up coming- either I broke up something dangerous, or the cops were very bored last night. Considering I live in a "good" town, I believe they were just bored.

 

Over the course of the hour when I watched all this go down, I began to feel insanely guilty. What if I just ruined the lives of these young men by calling the police? What if the cops treat them unfairly? They were mostly hispanic- I think at least one was white, though. It would be my fault because I called the police on them. I'm not the type of person that feels as though "they needed to learn a lesson- act up suffer the consequences." It's ok, if that would be your rationale- it's just not the way I think. The reason I called is because I like my "good" town. I don't want to not be able to walk down the street without folks fighting and carrying on. And what if the loser of the fight got mad and decided to cheat? What if somebody pulled out a gun, or a knife, or beat somebody with that big ole stick. I would have felt guilty for watching and not acting if the situation got worse. During the course of their little tussle, folks were walking by with their kids just trying to get home after a long day- what if they would have hurt somebodies baby? Look at the picture, they were close to my apartment. Close enough for a stray bullet. Close enough that I had to react and do something. But did I do the right thing?

 

How would you have responded? Ignore it, call the police immediately, wait and see if it gets worse, go outside and intervene, what?

{I went to sleep praying for them, I thought I was going to have bad dreams because of my guilt. Thankfully I am greedy, and apparently shallow because I dreamt of my new pineapple slicer that I bought yesterday. All night I dreamt of eating pineapples.}