Woman Gang Raped - Neighbors Hear Screams Don't Bother to call 911

[my2sense]

PHILADELPHIA - June 25, 2008 (WPVI) -- Philadelphia police removed crime scene evidence from the first floor apartment in the converted rowhouse in the 2700 block of Allegheny Avenue.

Philadelphia police removed crime scene evidence from the first floor apartment in the converted rowhouse in the 2700 block of West Allegheny Avenue. It's where a 20 year old woman who lives alone was raped overnight and robbed. She told police she entered the building around 1 a.m. After noticing the front door was not locked as it usually was..

Lt. Tom McDevitt told what happened.

"She walked into the common hallway. There was a man in the hallway that appeared to be leaving. As they passed each other, he put his hand over her mouth and forced her into her apartment. He demanded money. She didn't have any. Then came another knock at the door and two more men came in. She's tied up, clothing removed, and sexually assaulted."

The next door neighbor says she saw the victim enter the building and immediately heard screaming..

Benite Sangare told Action News, "She got in the hallway, slammed her door shut and screamed. I didn't pay any attention to it. I thought she fell over something, and that was it. I went to bed."

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/take_action&id=6227125

::This is just ONE of other incidents around the country of women being brutalized while neighbors do NOTHING to help. Here are other examples:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/nyregion/03murder.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/local_news/epaper/2007/06/21/w1b_rape_0621.html

Are we turning into a third world country? I just read about a group of teens beating a homeless man to death while passers by did NOTHING. What the hell kind of society have we turned into? ::

[Duke Newcombe]

1. There is nothing new under the sun...unfortunately

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

Catherine Susan Genovese (July 7, 1935<1> — March 13, 1964), commonly known as Kitty Genovese, was a New York City woman who was stabbed to death near her home in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, New York.<3> Genovese was buried in a family grave at Lakeview Cemetery in New Canaan, Connecticut.

The circumstances of her murder and the supposed lack of reaction of numerous neighbors were reported by a newspaper article published two weeks later; the common portrayal of neighbors being fully aware, but completely nonresponsive has later been criticized as inaccurate. Nonetheless, it prompted investigation into the social psychological phenomenon that has become known as the bystander effect (seldomly: "Genovese syndrome")<4> and especially diffusion of responsibility.

Duke

[hendo]

9. Yup, pure bystander effect

people just really aren't as nice and quick to help as we all think they should be, especially when a lot of them witness an event.

Almost any sense of community is gone, it's a shame.

A while ago in Denver there was an old man who got hit by a car. Even though cars continued to pass, no one helped him.

[Chulanowa]

19. It's herd mentality

If we witness someone get hurt while we're the only people present, we'll usually step up to the plate. If there are other people around, we'll mill around with the assumption that someone more capable of helping is in the crowd. It's not a decaying society, it's just one of the dumb ways our instincts are wired.

Basically people see something like this happening, they are concerned... but they think they can do nothing to help, so they don't.

There's also the problem that, if you see three men stabbing another person... your sense of reason tells you to not let the three men with knives know you've seen them, since they don't seem to mind killing people.

[Downtown Hound]

29. The bystander effect actually has less to do with people not

caring, and more to do with the fact that people automatically assume that somebody else will do something. We live in a society that has programmed responses for things like disasters. The police almost always show up at an accident or a shooting. The fire department almost always shows up for a fire. People just sometimes don't bother making that phone call because they automatically assume somebody else will. It's an inherent assumption that we take for granted, and one that, unfortunately, isn't always true.

I had some experience with this recently. I was driving on a mountain road the other week, and suddenly came to a backed up line of traffic. Up ahead, on a incline, a big rig truck and a pickup were just sitting there face to face in the other lane, stopped. It didn't look like they had hit each other, there was no crunched metal. Rather, it looked like the driver's of both trucks had simply stopped right before hitting each other and then left the scene with both of their vehicles just sitting there. No one could find them and nobody knew who they were.

Anyways, after a lot of chaos, my lane started moving again, but as I moved past the two stopped trucks I could see that the other lane of traffic that was behind them couldn't go anywhere. The big rig was blocking their way, and our oncoming traffic was preventing them from going around. At first I didn't think I needed to call the police, as it was such a chaotic scene that it was virtually guaranteed that somebody else would, right? Then I remembered that story of the lady that screamed for help while being murdered and nobody did anything. I decided to make the call anyways.

It took me over twenty minuted to get out of the mountains and get to a pay phone, and I was certain that by now the police would have all kinds of calls about the incident. Guess what? They didn't. Nobody had called them, I was the only one. I had to give them detailed directions about where this had happened.

I almost didn't make that call because I was so sure that somebody else would. And if I hadn't ever heard the story about the woman being murdered while everybody heard her scream and did nothing, I never would have made the call myself. We make assumptions about situations that aren't always true. There were many concerned people at that "accident" that got out of their cars to try and get some answers. But none of them called the cops, and I think it's because they just assumed somebody else would. In this case they were right, but only because I'd heard of that exact thing happening before.

[hendo]

30. by assuming that someone else will do something

they are not taking the initiative and therefore not caring. They can tell themselves that they care, but in the end thats just cognitive dissonance.

[bean fidhleir]

34. Not recently, but I had a little experience too

I live in an ethnically and economically mixed urban neighborhood in a small, depressed city. Several years ago, one night two teens (women) got into a fight, and one of them stabbed the other ---what turned out to be a non-trivial but not life- or function-threatening wound. I heard the kerfuffle, looked out my window, saw the victim sitting hunched over in a puddle of blood, and immediately called the cops. The woman at the cop shop laughed and told me I lived in a good neighborhood because mine was the 14th call they'd received!

[varkam]

35. Good on you.

The best defense against the bystander effect is knowing about it.

Also, it has a lot to do with if people make the determination that the situation is actually an emergency; there was a study done wherein students would sit in a room taking a test, and the room would start to fill with smoke. In actuality, only one of the students was a participant while the other students were confederates in league with the experimenter. In one condition, all of the confederates just kept right on taking the test like nothing was happening, and so the vast majority of the time the participant did just the same. In the other condition, the confederates would begin to look worried at the appearance of smoke and talk amongst themselves about it. In that condition, the vast majority of the participants left the room to investigate and/or to look for help.

[Jennicut]

21. Kitty Genovese was my Grandmother's cousin. I have never forgotten the lesson of helping others.

My Mom told me about this story when I was younger, how my Grandma's cousin was murdered while no one did anything about it. Most of my Mother's family was from New York and they were a large, caring Italian family and this was devastating to them. It was a heartbreaking story. I don't think I could ever let someone suffer knowingly and not do something about it. The terrible thing is a man was recently run down in Hartford, CT, in the state I grew up in. No one did anything for him or stopped their cars to help. It has been happening for years-but I know there are good people put there and for every story like this there are plenty of good Samaritan stories as well.

[intheflow]

27. I wrote a college paper on Kitty Genovese.

It was shocking then, and it's shocking now. :hug: for the pain your family carries around from that tragedy.

[pnorman]

24. I was just Googling "Kitty Genovese", when I saw that you had beaten me to it.

In addition to that Wiki reference you had posted, here's another one I found: http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs818a,0,7944135.story

pnorman

[Phillycat]

2. I will say this. It is LOUD in Philly a lot of the time.

When I lived in the city, I was forever rushing to the window to see who was outside screaming and if I needed to call 911. After 4 years of living in West Philly, there wasn't a SINGLE incident of an assault happening outside my window, but it was almost daily someone was screaming. I got to the point where I was telling off teenage girls: "Would you stop screaming, someday you're going to be screaming for real and nobody's going to pay any attention!"

[ben_meyers]

3. Turned into?

What the hell kind of society have we turned into?

I don't think we have turned into a society that we haven't always been. Our history is replete with example of horrible behavior towards each other.

Example:

Catherine "Kitty" Genovese,

Suddenly, the man overtook her and grabbed her. She screamed. Residents of nearby apartment houses turned on their lights and threw open their windows. The woman screamed again: ``Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me!''

A man in a window shouted: ``Let that girl alone.'' The attacker walked away. Apartment lights went out and windows slammed shut. The victim staggered toward her apartment. But the attacker returned and stabbed her again.

``I'm dying!'' she cried.

Windows opened again. The attacker entered a car and drove away. Windows closed, but the attacker soon came back again. His victim had crawled inside the front door of an apartment house at 82-62 Austin St. He found her sprawled on the floor and stabbed her still again. This time he killed her.

It was not until 3:50 that morning -- March 13, 1964 -- that a neighbor of the victim called police. Officers arrived two minutes later and found the body. They identified the victim as Catherine Genovese, 28, who had been returning from her job as manager of a bar in Hollis. Neighbors knew her not as Catherine but as Kitty.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=389&topic_id=3530530&mesg_id=3530530

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

[CanonRay]

4. Society is Bushed

Totally indifferent to unprovoked war, torture, loss of constitutional rights. Need I go on?

[Taverner]

5. DON'T SNITCH

At least that's my take on it...

[ColbertWatcher]

7. When I call the police on my neighbors...

...and sometimes I have to, they ask me if I want to leave my name.

They already know my name based on where the call is coming from.

But they ask anyway, and I usually say no because I don't want anyone in my family getting hurt.

[Taverner]

10. No I agree, I just think what may have led up to no one calling is the dont snitch mentality

You can argue up and down why this position has become popular, but its there.

[ColbertWatcher]

11. I think it's the power disbursal thing...

...DUer ben_meyers alluded to in post #3.

When people think someone else will do something, they won't.

If you want to see this in action, go to a movie theater and watch how few people will get up if there's a problem.

The more people in the theater, the less likely anyone will do anything.

They're actually waiting for one of all those other people to do something.

I'm just sickened because this is basic stuff and people haven't been taught about it.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. That was it, I went to bed!?

Another GOP voter in the making.

[Triana]

8. one word:

animals

The people who commit the crimes.
The people who do nothing to stop it.

[Love Bug]

12. I've been told because of the Kitty Genovese 'syndrome'

if being raped to yell "Fire!" instead of "Rape!" because people care much more about a burning building, especially if they might be in it.

[ColbertWatcher]

13. Yup. Please see post # 11. n/t

[Pithlet]

33. It's actually a myth that no one helped or called the police in that case.

People actually did call the police. More than once. There may have been some delay because there was confusion as to how the calls were routed. An ambulance did show up as a result, and she died on the way to the hospital. The media initially erroneously reported that no calls to the police were made, sparking a media outcry, but it wasn't true. I remember reading an interview given by one of the neighbors saying it wasn't true, but it was too late. They'd already been labeled the unfeeling neighbors who did nothing, and that's how they're remembered to this day.

[kestrel91316]

14. Here in LA you can call 911 about noise and screaming in your

neighbor's apartment. And you can call, and call, and call..........whether or not any cops EVER show up is another matter entirely.

I have a neighbor who has noisy kids who stay alone at night when she is working (one is 15 or 16) and they fight and beat each other up and yell and scream. It got so bad I called LAPD once. You'd think the idea of a child screaming and maybe being hurt would send them running, right? Think again - they never showed up. And they never showed up when she and her BF got in a big fight and were throwing things and roughing each other up and making enough noise to wake the dead.

People give up trying and stop caring after a while. I can relate.

[kimmylavin]

16. Yup.

In my West LA apartment, I had a neighbor downstairs who I constantly called the police on (or FOR).
Someone was always getting hit in there: woman, child.
At least once every two weeks or so, there was a huge fight in the street, involving the woman, her ex-boyfriend, and ALL of their friends.

I called once because I heard a child getting hurt downstairs.
The cops never came.
They did, however, call an hour later to see if I still needed someone to come out.
I said, "I called you for a case of child abuse! I can't hear the kid screaming anymore, which could mean any number of things!"
As it happened, when the cops hadn't come, my boyfriend and I had gone downstairs to check if everything was okay, and the hitting stopped.
But if I hadn't had him (6'4", 285 pounds), I wouldn't have been able to go down there myself.

[devilgrrl]

20. Next time tell the cops that you can smell marijuana smoke...

they'll be there white on rice.

[CrispyQ]

22. Ain't it the fucking truth! --nt

:eyes:

[kimmylavin]

25. I'm afraid you're right.

They know just what to protect people from, huh?

[glitch]

26. with a swat team.

who may break down the door of the little old lady next door.

[SteveM]

32. ...Boy, I'll say! (nt)

[anigbrowl]

15. Everyone thinks the neighbor is heartless, but there isn't enough info to judge

I really can't tell from the story whether there was a lot of screaming or she just screamed once, and we have no way of knowing how loud or quiet the woman was normally. Sometimes I've been disturbed late at night by what I thought was someone screaming, only to stick my head out the door and discover it was a drunken person laughing, or one time, a neighbor watching a horror movie with the living room window open.

People not calling 9/11 when they should is a bad thing, but I think it's a good idea to have more facts before condemning the guy. It's easy to complain about people being good citizens or not after the event when we know the reason for the scream, but such things are often not nearly so obvious at the time. Comparisons with Kitty Genovese are wildly overblown since this neighbor clearly didn't know what going on in the building, whereas Kitty Genovese was seen to be the victim of a murderous assault by her neighbors who watched it take place.

Incidentally, since that episode took place quite some time ago, perhaps the appropriate question is not 'what have we become' but 'what were we all along?' Memories of a past golden age where everyone was nice to each other and helped each other out in times of trouble are mostly illusory.

[RedEarth]

17. Few weeks ago some old man in New York or New Hampshire was hit by a car and some people just

drove by and looked at him laying in the street......sad testament on society.

[Xenotime]

18. Just like they do in these xbox games

See. People just think they can hit a "reset" button

[MicaelS]

23. What the hell kind of society have we turned into?

The kind of society where for the last 50 years People have been brainwashed by movies and TV shows, and on the local and national news, with cops at all levels, especially the brass, telling people to let them handle it. Once upon a time we lived in the time of society where people intervened to help one another. Not anymore.

"Don't do anything, call 911." "Don't get involved, you might get hurt, call 911" "We are the Professionals, we are trained what to do and not to do, call 911."

So if you're constantly told by the Professionals to "don't do anything, call us", it's a quick mental step from there, to "don't do anything at all", don't get involved, let someone else handle it.

And if a person DOES attempt or actually DOES physically intervene, they are chastised by many people.

Friends and family members say "What did you do that for, you could have been killed."

And if a person does get involved and THEN involves the potential use of or ACTUAL use of deadly force (that means a GUN) they are called "Vigilantes", by ignorant fools who really believe that ONLY the "Police should handle it" or the worse kind who believe that no one who commits a crime is really deserving of any punishment.

WHAT IF, you can't call 911? What is you don't have a cell phone, not everyone does? What if there's no pay phone around, there are fewer and fewer these days? What happens if your land-line phone is out because you didn't pay the bill, or simply can't afford one?

Are you going to simply ignore another persons plight? After all the next time it just be you, and if you refused to get involved for someone else, then someone else might refuse to get involved for you.

The first thing that we as a society need to start doing at all LEVELS IS unlearning is the attitude of "Don't do anything, just call 911.

People need to be taught to start being mentally and psychologically prepared to GET INVOLVED AND DO SOMETHING.

[Greyhound]

28. A culture wallowing in ignorance, indifference, and cruelty.

IOW, nothing new.

[indepat]

31. We've turned in to a 'puke society

:D