Monday, August 18, 2008

Rules are not a substitute for thought...

Over at Billy Beck's Two-Four:
'Til tomorrow, ponder this item, ladies and gentlemen, linked at Say Uncle.
I have no idea what Billy will have to say about it, but I'm going to concentrate on this, from an online commenter named "Steve":
I witness crimes and call 911 on a weekly basis and there is nothing I can do but watch the crime take place and relay the information to 911. If I had known that I was able to intervene I could have stopped a violent sexual assault in front of the YMCA on Tuesday evening. So what's the law? Are we intervening on our own now or what? [emphasis mine]
Note that Steve is not asking whether or not he "should" intervene; he's asking something different. Steve wants to know if he is "able" to intervene on his own and asks, looking for an answer: "what's the law?".

That's pathetic. What is this "we" garbage? I'm able to decide that sort of thing for myself.

2 comments:

Mike said...

Just wow, witnessing a sexual assault then worrying whether helping the victim is ok by the rules and doing nothing?

Sorry, shoot first, worry later. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

And even in Canada, no jury would ever convict me.

Ron said...

Mike, as it happens, Billy at Two-Four spent time dealing with the exact same section of the original post that I did, and for the same reasons--and it's well worth reading his quite detailed take on it.