To intervene or not to intervene?

[samvara]

Heading home from work yesterday I hit a moment of conscience when a loudly fighting guy and girl now designated A and B burst out of the tiny deli near my local train station and did a sort of angry yo-yo thing in and around the corner. I usually hang about if something like that flares up near me (presumed couples fighting) on the theory that at the very least having a witness doesn't hurt.

A dude further down the road and I hung about and observed for a little then wandered back to find the deli guy (F) with overturned chairs. The crowd of shouting people expanded to A & B plus 3 more guys (C, D & E) and included such winning phrases as ‘I’m not afraid to hit girls!” (C) My brother is going to get you!” (B) “He had a knife!” (A) the always awesome “I had to defend myself!” (F) and my personal favourite: “this is why we left Africa!” (D?)

I have no idea who started what; it vaguely seemed to be about someone (B? C?) wanting money from someone and B telling A off a lot but mostly it seemed shouty. We hung about and said soothing things like “Are you OK?” “I’m uncomfortable with all the threats of physical violence here” and “Would you like me to call the police?’ until eventually it wound down and the shouty people wandered off and caught a train. One of the guys (D?) did some sort of complicated but obviously peace-making handshaking ritual with Deli guy who was tiny and later said A & B had come in and A had tried to ‘fight him.’

I’m not sure what a really skillful intervention would look like, mostly I just provided uninvolved calmness - any suggestions on how to handle situations like this in the future?

Comments

[erda]

I've had quite a bit of crisis intervention training, and I would say you did exactly what you should have done.

A calm outsider can tremendously deescalate these kinds of things just by being there and offering to help.

Go you for not having bystander apathy. I don't think I would have your courage in a similar situation.

[samvara]

Thank you, I keep thinking there's some obvious, clever thing to do that I'm not doing - I felt pretty helpless! I value your comment immensely :)

Courage; hitting random female strangers is pretty unusual so I have a fair amount of cultural protection.

[enigel]

Hm, if you're ever here, I can tell you that you'd have to revise all your basic assumptions about that... :/

I'm not proud of our apathy/cowardice culture, but when it's more likely than not that the couple who'd been fighting a minute ago would unite against you if you said anything... Or that the kind of people who are likely to be fighting in public would also be likely to be physically aggressive... (Talking about people who know each other, not muggings / attacks etc.)

Also, it's interesting to note that my knee-jerk reaction to the idea of people "hanging about" a conflict scene is: rubberneckers, ugh. You were definitely not one, but this is usually why people hang about conflict scenes here. People like me hug their purses closer to their bodies and speed up, away from the conflict.

[leecetheartist]

Where is here for you enigel, if you don't mind my asking?

[enigel]

I don't mind: Romania, Bucharest.

[samvara]

I'm also a tall, well dressed white woman, I'm in the class of people the police will take seriously if there should be an incident. It helps and I know many people are not so lucky.

And yeah, there is always the possibility that I will be perceived as a threat and they will unite, I try to be non judgmental and quietly supportive and it usually works. Thankfully it doesn't happen often!

We have those people too, I think most of us have no idea what to do or say and often it manifests as creepy :( * g* I dated someone once and one of things I appreciated about him and his social group is that they would wander over and lean if they saw a couple fighting and make it clear that if the woman was offered violence they would support her.

[leecetheartist]

Thank you, I was wondering. It didn't sound quite like any of the cultures I'm familiar with, and now I see there's a reason for that, because I'm not!