bystander intervention training?

The only thing you will do is what everyone else does. You will back the fuck up and hope the attacker does not come for you. I have been on the receiving end of enough attacks to know no one comes in to help. Even your good friends back the fuck up. People have to be jostled out of their haze to call the fucking cops. They just watch. Do not expect a hero. Certainly do not pretend you are some sort of hero mr I need my gun to sleep.

This is how humans are wired. They are animals, and they are more precisely herd animals. When the predator comes and picks off a member of the herd the herd does not come and stomp the predators ass. They all give it some distance, and they watch to see if the predator is still coming. None of the herd cares about the death cries of the fallen even if the heard outnumbers the predator by hundreds.

Stop pretending you are rambo, because you are really one of little bo peeps sheeple.

Your AK-47 story is apples-to-oranges. Yes, if a guy whips out an AK-47 your options are severely limited - I get that. Sometimes there's just nothing you can do.
But the guy on the subway car was unarmed and putting a one sided beating on somebody completely overwhelmed. Also there were several other riders. There's no reason why they couldn't have broken this up and kept this guy from getting seriously injured. And this has ZERO to do with "training" - it wasn't rocket science. A guy is getting severely beaten and the aggressor needs to be stopped and the people sitting on their asses and filming it have the capability to at least try to stop it.

How about try to break it up? You might save a fellow subway rider from serious injury. This guy is going to keep beating up smaller, timid people and you might have an opportunity to do something to stop him. Next time he might stab somebody or cripple somebody, who knows?

Sad that not one person there has the "run toward danger" wiring even when it can save their fellow man. Maybe I was brought up differently, or associate with the wrong crowd. I know you can't help everybody but DAMN the guy wasn't Godzilla, and most of the people were adult males. Is NYC really so full of cowardly losers?

So the guy is stronger than any of the others - but he's not stronger than all of the others. There were several adult males - no way they couldn't have broken this up if not also stomped a mudhole in him and detained him for the police. BTW you can get your teeth fixed - but how do you get your self respect and pride back? If that were you riding the MARTA wouldn't you want me to at least try to help you? Yes situational awareness is important but once the shit hits the fan (like it for this asian guy) if you can kick it into high gear and save him from injury, why not?

Not all people are like herd animals. And this has nothing to do with being Rambo. You have told stories here on wordforge of getting into several traffic related altercations. Were you bullshitting us or what? If not, then if you were on that car you should be the first one out of your seat and into the bully's face, since you are the one getting physical with people on a regular basis.

How's that work? Do you use hand signals.

not following you.

Yeah... I'm definitely gonna need new teeth.

Finally somebody who gets it. Of course I shouldn't be surprised - everybody knows ya don't mess with old people. They just don't stand for any bullshit.

Or maybe the bully might need new teeth too. It would be a small price to pay to know you helped your community.

I've never seen this movie - is it any good?

You completely missed the point. Because my friend was ex-military he was trained to respond before his conscious mind registered that there was a nutter with a gun. The other people in the bar, who weren't ex-military pretty much stood there until the shooting started and at that point, it was too late for some of them.

Our concept of free-will is flawed. That's not to say we're complete automatons but we don't have as broad a range of behaviors to choose from as is commonly thought. Here's a real easy way to explain it: Think of human behavior like a card game. Every player gets dealt a standard set of cards, each individual player also gets some cards that are somewhat unique to them. They don't get a choice in either set of cards. As the game goes on, they can choose to pick up different cards, and they can also discard some of the cards that they've been dealt, but not all of them. Sometimes they get to pick when they discard a card or get a new one, sometimes they can't. If you encounter a situation that calls for a card that you don't have, you just kind of sit there until someone plays a card that allows you to work off of. What happened in that car is that the rest of the people didn't have the right card to play, so they just sat there, feeling uncomfortable, because they didn't know what to do.

It is easy to say that you'd do XYZ in a specific situation, but until you've actually been there in that moment, you don't really know what you'll do. I know from personal experience, unfortunately, all too well that this is a universal constant. You put someone in a situation that they're completely unprepared for, and that they've never been trained on how to respond to, and they will flounder every time. If any of those people are in a car and a similar situation happens again, they'll all do something because they've been through it before, but if it's their first time? They'll have trouble figuring out what to do. After all, they've been conditioned to ignore shit that happens on the subway, more than they've been conditioned to pay attention to it. For example, panhandlers have taken to hopping on subway cars and then begging for money between stops. They've got a captive audience, and they know that people will pay them to STFU. Not to mention you've got just your general weirdos in a car at any given time. If you ignore them, they won't bother you with their crazy stories about lizard space aliens disguised as famous people showing up and crushing skulls or whatever.

When it comes to intervention, what should be done when a group of police officers slowly strangle the life out of someone? My own feeling is that it's only a matter of time before a member of the public tries to intervene and gets shot. I can see things going horribly downhill from there.

If you have a reason to go towards the danger, then you might. I would say a police officer, bouncer would be in a different mindset as they run into this sort of thing and end up reacting. Some safety people like security guards or people who might be responsible for breaking up fights might react. Security guards can be really half assed and mostly be there to call police. Maybe a military person would react more than another person, especially if they had been in fights and combat before. Maybe some MMA person or someone who does combat sports might also. The other type of person who would have a probability of intervening would be a parent with their child. If your kid is under attack you probably would get involved at the risk of yourself. That does not mean any parent is going to risk themselves for some random guy on a train.

If you are asking the question of why no one responds, you have never been there. If you do not know how you would react, then you have not been there. I know this because I have.

More than likely the only way you are going to help the community is giving them a video of you getting curb stomped if you got involved.

This shit reminds me of all the locals complaining about the security guard at parkland who did not run in to the hail of bullets to save the kids with his pistol. A whole bunch of couch rambos telling us how brave they are while watchingt this shit on TV and blaming the wrong person. It is so much easier for you to yell at the passengers for doing nothing and pretend you are a tough guy who would have done something.

Do tell us what the great toilet cleaner of GA would have done. Even if you moved in you would block the attacker's escape route forcing him to fight you to get away. You are on a moving train that is going to have a delayed police response because it is moving. Even if someone is calling 911 they still have to figure out where the train is going and then establish what car you are on, and then figure out what stop to intervene at.

What are you going to do tough guy? Let us say you have the guy cornered. Are you going to beat him down and hold him until the police come? I am sure the guy is going to just let you do that because you are super toiled man. Your old and tired racist ass is just going to get stabbed and kicked in the head.

If you are going to so this at least get a green jumpsuit and call yourself ass kick. Get some people to film it so you can add the footage to your super hero web page and maybe some young girl will save your worthless hide.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. It probably has, but never made it on the national news.

"It is easy to say that you'd do XYZ in a specific situation, but until you've actually been there in that moment, you don't really know what you'll do. I know from personal experience, unfortunately, all too well that this is a universal constant. You put someone in a situation that they're completely unprepared for, and that they've never been trained on how to respond to, and they will flounder every time." - Tuckerfan

bullshit. Some people might flounder, some will do just fine. Did you watch the video? No training required really for that particular situation. Guy getting beaten senseless and it could be fatal. Rush the bad guy and break it up. Maybe your personal experiences differ from mine. To me it's just common sense.

I have been in similar situations, and people responded. Almost everyone I know responds to emergencies unless it's so dangerous there's just no way to pull it off. This subway situation didn't have bullets flying or anything. Just one shit bag thug, not a group of them. One thug relentlessly pummeling a defenseless guy. I don't know one adult male who wouldn't have responded. What would you do Tererun? Maybe I'm wrong but I bet you'd open up a can on this motherfucker.

"Rush the bad guy and break it up"? How? If you've never been in a fight before how do you know what to do? How do you know if you're going to be strong enough to overcome the guy if he decides to fight back? Does he have a weapon that he's not pulled yet? What will you do if he does? How many people think that the backpack, briefcase, or purse that they carry every day could be used as a weapon? How many of those that do think of using such things as a weapon has ever practiced doing so?

This is not how people react. I was on line at a KFC in Penn station when a bum came up demanding money from me. The fucking KFC people did not do anything, and everyone else just backed away. The stupid crack head ran when I started shouting back. I have had my friends just watch as I have had to fight off an attacker in a parking lot. That one really pissed me off because some of them were tough guys. This is how people are. People will not even call the police when a woman screams bloody murder as she is raped. I got locked in a Hotel lobby as a woman screamed that some dude was chasing her to rape her and the guy who was running the desk did not even call the police. He just locked the door until she ran away, and would not open it up for her to come in when I was like WTF. This was in the middle of a bad area of baltimore and the middle of the night, and before I had a cell phone.

This is what people do. I used to be like that. Before the guys at the paintball field taught me how to be menacing I was terrified of any encounter. It was my fucking job to get in the way of new yorkers hepped up on adrenaline in a sport that can get very angry. I became good at it. Other refs would just sit and watch, but that was my field when I was on it. It completely changed who I was when I started to gain that sort of confidence. It changed the way I react to all sorts of situations.

I will tell you that in that situation I probably would not have blocked that dude into the end of the train. In the other assault they showed that day outside the lobby of the building I think I would have intervened to scare the guy beating the old woman off. That is because I would try to scare the dude away and figure I could retreat to the security guard in he came after me. I obviously would have been wrong about the security guard, but that dude looked like he ran away. This guy I would not have cornered in the train. I would have been looking for a break in the fight where I could move in between the attacker and the victim and also left a path to the train exit. Then I might have tried to get in there. I have been there in situations before and know how to throw a person off their game and hope they run or someone else intervenes. But that means there has to be an opening on a thin train car. I am worrying about the victim and getting an opportunity to help them. I really do not give a fuck about the attacker because that is not my job.

It is different in different situations. When it was my job and my business I would just puff up and scare the fuck out of everyone around. When the bar fight starts around me I distract and wait for the bouncer. It is actually rare for me not to be the target so I do not know how much I would react to get in the way of some dude on the street. I am normally the one wondering why are all those assholes letting this shit just happen.

@oldfella1962 when I started by saying it is not how people react, I mean it is not how over 90 percent of people react.

Did you not read the Wikipedia article I linked upthread about the attack on the MAX here in Portland? Hell, I'm sure there was a thread about it here on WF.
Guy harrassing two teenage girls, a black girl and a Somali girl. Three guys stepped in, and got knifed for their efforts. Two died, and the perp successfully escaped the train before the police got him in the neighborhood on the opposited side of the freeway the train runs alongside.
That's why people don't step in.

I have to say by the time most incidents are over you are normally just getting a read on what is going on. I see it more as a few moments of WTF is that. Then you realize those people are fighting. Then your mind has to decide if they are fighting for real, if they are going to stop, and if someone is getting really hurt. All this time you are backing up and trying to see how others are reacting to this. It is sort of like everyone is trying to soilently confirm they are all seeing the same outrageous shit. You back up and wonder what is going on as your mind is trying to piece together what to do. By the time you start wondering if anyone else is going to help, or if you can do something most fights are either over or getting much more serious.

I was trying to search for the whole video because the news cut it up so we cannot see how long the fight was. In that search I came up with this from 2017



This video shows some interesting things. There is a crazy white dude yelling at an asian man on a bus. Watch how the people around the asian guy clear the way for the attacker to get to him. The guy is in a window seat and the large guy sitting on the aisle next to him gets up and out of the way and does not say anything. The passengers watch the white guy smack the asian dude twice, and it is not until the asian guy gets up that anyone intervenes. Then when they intervene they tell the asian guy it is not worth it while the white guy is shadow boxing behind them. Until the asian dud gets up the only complaint the passengers have is the white guy used the N word on the asian and I think a black passenger complained about that.

I do not know what happened for most of the time in the train video, but here is a more clear incident where the attacker could have been pushed back with a little help from the bystanders. Just standing up pushed back this guy. The black guy on the train seemed a lot more dedicated to the assault. That makes it harder to intervene, but not all situations are the same.

We smack 'em with our canes, bite 'em with our dentures held out at arm's length, then bore them to death with stories of what the world was like when we were young!

@oldfella1962 maybe in the case of a fight in front of you, you would. It is far more likely that you might intervene there than with a shooter. I will say that my opinion is more based on the number of times I have been really disappointed in tough guys who have not done squat when I have been attacked, or when I have relied on tough guy refs to back me out in the field when intervening in a fight and they are just not there. So in other words, I will say I may be wrong about your reactions.

This whole conversation has really made me think of how I have gone from the guy whose whole body stutters from conflict fear to a person who can think of distractions and actions like in the sherlock holmes movies robert downey jr did. I do not think of fighting like that because I am not a trained fighter, but I have thought my moves of distraction and de-escalation out. Some people have to recognize, this is 45+ years of going from being a scared ass punching bag in school, and being a big old target because of my geekiness and trans nature probably seeping out, to basically having been through some massive changes in thinking and doing some bad ass shit. Bad ass shit is also dumb ass shit that can get you hurt. I do not even know what changed mentally. All I know is I was cowardly and craven, and now I can stare down a group of people wanting to fuck me up. really it is just a stare down because if the bigger dudes want to I know they can fuck my shit up. I might be a little better at fighting than I was, but I do not do it often and I do not know how to do it.

I have just been the target of these random attacks because of being trans or being a scrawny geek so many times and really most tough guys are all fucking talk. There are a couple of guys I know who would do something, but that is because they have been put in positions to have to do something. like @Elwood being a LEO, or even old zombie probably being a corrections officer I would see be on the edge of making a decision to step in. You may have that experience having been in the military. Oh, and spaceturkey seems like the type who would do something also because I believe his history in the bar scene.

As for the rest of humanity if you do not do it, you just do not do it when it needs to be done. I know I am not a great example of normal people because I am stupid enough to walk at a person shooting at me if I am pissed. There is a sort of don't give a fuck that comes along when I am mad that I am really lucky I have not been hurt real bad. Do not get me wrong, there is no skilled bad ass when I get angry. It is just me improvising on progressively worse situations while trying to get to a person I want to smack in some way. If there was something really dangerous in my way and I hit it I would be fucked up. The only thing experience has helped me with is my body does not lock up in fear anymore. That is not necessarily a great thing and I have only just started to learn to have a calming voice that says maybe do something else.

I wonder if the type of guy who would suckerpunch a dude or attack some person like this can read the people around them to know they are not going to do anything.

Then there's the common self phone.

If you really have to do it and you have no training, get hold and hang on for dear life.

Even a fit young angry person will tire quick thrashing around with an entire extra person's body weight and the less room you give them the less damage they can do.

Gracie jiu jitsu summarised in two sentences.

But in the US where good guys have guns that's clearly not necessary.

In most instances though @Tuckerfan has hit the nail on the head. Most people freeze when confronted with real world violence or at best wait for others to take the initiative. Bystander apathy is a genuine concern and it's amazing what people will choose not to see even if they aren't completely debilitated by shock

what is a "self phone?" Is that a typo for cell phone? Regardless if any of you want to sacrifice a phone in your attack you can use mine - it's a flip phone so I'm only out about twenty bucks.
But that is a good point - improvised weapons are all around us. Keys, briefcases, belts, canned foods and bottles if we are in a store, etc. etc.

Spot has it right to a point: just grab the bad guy and do something, anything - it's not rocket science. Jesus when we were kids and got into fights did we have "training?" Hell no, we just did it. Fighting is hard-wired into our DNA. Being frozen by fear is not. I disagree that most people freeze when confronted with real world violence.

But let's consider just this one incident shall we? Guy is wailing on another guy and continues much longer than necessary. He's not armed and if he is, he's not in a position to retrieve a weapon fast enough to stop SEVERAL ADULT MALES from engaging him. I can't wrap my mind around every single one of these bystanders being frozen with fear. Has modern society fucked people up that badly? Damn bring the fucking comet already.