Call the cops!

[incog]

What would the circumstances be for you to call the police on someone for something that did not directly effect you? I know a lot of people would call the police if they personally were robbed or assaulted, but what would it take for you to get involved.

Recent posts on the board show AmeliaG would call the fuzz if a stranger were beating up a smaller stranger and SindelChaos would blow the whistle on a stranger who was doing drugs by himself.

What do you think is important enough to dial 911 over?

[hewhoisagod]

well there's the obvious ones of seeing a crime like ****, robbery, or murder being commited. Oh and meth labs, Kansas is the number one producer of meth in the country, and my county is ranked number 3 in the state for meth production.

[Nightingale]

Various things in my small town such as criminal damage, danger on the roads (obstacles, roaming cows, that sort of thing). And, of course, actual crimes being committed such as assault or similar. Being a close associate of the police chief in the town ... and standing for election on the crime prevention panel next week ...

[One Eyed Cat]

What would the circumstances be for you to call the police on someone for something that did not directly effect you? I know a lot of people would call the police if they personally were robbed or assaulted, but what would it take for you to get involved.

Recent posts on the board show AmeliaG would call the fuzz if a stranger were beating up a smaller stranger and SindelChaos would blow the whistle on a stranger who was doing drugs by himself.

What do you think is important enough to dial 911 over?

Guy beating a woman if I couldn't stop it.
Anything related to child abuse, chid abduction.
Gang beatings
Obvious cases of drunk driving, reckless endangerment etc

I carry weapons and a cell phone, I'd try both approaches just to be proactive


OEC

[Trotter]

Yeah everyone says they would, but there is that classic example of a woman being stabbed and beaten to death in the parking lot of a town home complex and no one called the cops, meanwhile there were many residents home, one person called a friend to ask what they should do. Another man climbed out of his window onto his roof so he could get across to another building and use someone's phone. I believe it happened in new york.

[One Eyed Cat]

Yeah everyone says they would, but there is that classic example of a woman being stabbed and beaten to death in the parking lot of a town home complex and no one called the cops, meanwhile there were many residents home, one person called a friend to ask what they should do. Another man climbed out of his window onto his roof so he could get across to another building and use someone's phone. I believe it happened in new york.

Kitty Genovese

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial%5...ty%5Fgenovese/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
http://www.angelfire.com/comics/mooreportal/kitty.html

There were actually calls between friends to decide what to do. No 911 call was reported before she died. Opinions vary as to if 38 people actually saw or knew the screams were real. There have been psychological and sociological theories named after this case.

OEC

[Amelia G]

I called 911 on a big guy who was beating a small woman in front of a whole lot of horrified but inactive witnesses this month, so I think I can conclude that I would in fact be the exception.

Anybody read Stanley Milgram? A lot of my teachers over the years complained about my authority problem, but hopefully it has its plusses

[Amelia G]

PS I would never ever call the police on someone for a crime like drug use or prostitution. Someone else's body = someone else's choice. I think all that stuff should be legalized and some of it should be regulated after legalization.

[One Eyed Cat]

I called 911 on a big guy who was beating a small woman in front of a whole lot of horrified but inactive witnesses this month, so I think I can conclude that I would in fact be the exception.

Anybody read Stanley Milgram? A lot of my teachers over the years complained about my authority problem, but hopefully it has its plusses

Milgram, yeah.



Controversy surrounded Stanley Milgram for much of his professional life as a result of a series of experiments on obedience to authority which he conducted at Yale University in 1961-1962. He found, surprisingly, that 65% of his subjects, ordinary residents of New Haven, were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks-up to 450 volts-to a pitifully protesting victim, simply because a scientific authority commanded them to, and in spite of the fact that the victim did not do anything to deserve such punishment. The victim was, in reality, a good actor who did not actually receive shocks, and this fact was revealed to the subjects at the end of the experiment. But, during the experiment itself, the experience was a powerfully real and gripping one for most participants.
Milgram's career also produced many other creative, though less controversial, experiments; such as, the small-world method (the source of "Six Degrees of Separation"), the lost-letter technique, and an experiment testing the effects of televised antisocial behavior which, though conducted 30 years ago, remains unique to the present day.

<LI>Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist. (1974)

<LI>[From a description of his methodology in his doctoral dissertation, a conformity experiment using an adaptation of the Asch group-pressure procedure] With tape recordings it is easy to create synthetic groups. Tapes do not have to be paid by the hour and they are always available. (1961)

<LI>With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. …A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority. (1965)

<LI>[From Milgram's reply to a critic who claimed that most subjects in the obedience experiments discovered that the shocks were not real but continued anyway because they didn't want to ruin the experiment] Orne's suggestion that the subjects only feigned sweating, trembling, and stuttering to please the experimenter is pathetically detached from reality, equivalent to the statement that hemophiliacs bleed to keep their physicians busy. (1972)

<LI>[From Milgram's reply to Baumrind's ethical critique of the obedience experiments] I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals. (1964)

<LI>When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority. (1974)

<LI>It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. (1974)

…The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act. (1974)

http://www.stanleymilgram.com

Took a social psych class not long ago. Have always had a serious authority problem. I hate bad guys worse so I try to keep my vigilantism within the law.


OEC

[Tequila Zaire]

I only call the cops if the situation unfolding just seriously needs one to keep a person alive.

However I would not call one if the situation needed one but would put me in danger. May sound a bit cold but anonymity does not exist in some areas of this fine city and getting involved WILL get your ass killed. Though generally after working with the people I've worked with...I don't call a cop for anything , it's just too hard to trust or take them seriously. They either go too far or not far enough or make you the cause of whatever crime was commited agianst you.

When I was 15 or so I was working for a family friend at his garage. A guy came in one night trying to rob the place with a silly little handgun. A co-worker pulled a shotgun on him and needless to say the would be crook ran off. Called the cops like a good lil citizen and spent the next 4 hours trying to explain everything and anything about the shotgun, certain cars in the garage, etc. Didn't take a description of the robber or anything. Eventually the local grapevine clued us in on the crook (local fool) and justice was meaded out. I don't even want to think of the hassle that would have unfolded had we shot the idiot inside the garage. I know cops have their own pressures and problems...but they do leave a bad taste.

[CarnalxKiss]

Child Abuse/Neglect
Murder/Medical Emergency
Spousal Abuse if violence was involved..
****..(after i castrated the ****head)