An elderly man got mugged on the subway and nobody helped.
Obviously, that sucks and that's not the kind of city we want to be. And it's very easy and kind of egotistically satisfying to sit here comfortably behind our computers and dis the other passengers on the subway car and smugly assume we'd do better if we were in that position.
But that's not productive or helpful. That won't get better results if this ever happens again. What we need to do is figure out what the people on that subway didn't know and what stopped them from acting, and get out the information that would have empowered/inspired them to act.
So let's start at the beginning: What do you do if someone is being mugged? Your visceral reaction is "Well, help them, DUH!"
But how do you do that? Yes, you press the yellow strip. But what happens when you press the yellow strip? For example, the news articles in response to this incident mentioned that it doesn't sound an audible alarm. I didn't actually know that, and it's useful to know. Also, does the yellow strip stop the train? I'd assume it doesn't because that would be illogical (you don't want to be stuck in a tunnel when an incident is happening), but it resembles the stop signals on some buses, so it might lead people to believe it would stop the train.
But once the yellow strip is pressed, someone should still help the elderly man. How, exactly, do you do that? The first mental image that comes to mind is physically intervening. But would that actually work? I, like many other people, am nowhere near strong enough to physically restrain one grown man (and in this case there were two grown men). So I wouldn't be stopping them, I'd just be distracting them. Which does have value and buys the victim some time, but I'm not sure if it's the best use of me. So, since I'd just be distracting the perps rather than stopping them, I started brainstorming other ways to distract them. Taunt them? Pants them? Steal their hat and throw it across the subway car like a playground bully? Steal their wallet? I'd probably get hurt. What if they have a gun? Then other people on the subway car could get hurt too - would my taunting and distracting the attackers put other lives at risk? What's the best approach to take? Would my jumping into the fray inspire/shame other people to help, or would it make them go "Meh, she's got it under control". Should I take their picture, or get someone whose phone can email pictures to do that?
Obviously, all these ideas are just ideas. They aren't necessarily good ones, they just popped into my head. What we need is advice from experts, publicized in the media, on what a person who isn't strong enough to restrain a grown man could do to help. What would be productive? What would be most likely to get positive results rather than just getting more people hurt? Often when I've found myself in unexpected situations I've frozen up and had no idea how to react, because I didn't anticipate this. But after I've put thought into what I'd do in a situation, I have ideas and can react well the next time. So let's put aside the temptation to throw blame and work on getting useful ideas out there, so people will know what to do next time.
They've also been trying to convince witnesses to come forward and talk to the police, and I think it would be useful here to give them an idea of what to expect. They should tell them that they're not going to get blamed or get in trouble for not responding (and if they are going to get blamed or get in trouble, they should make it so that doesn't happen). They should get the statements they need, but also find out (in a non-blamey but rather proactive and brainstormy way) why exactly they didn't respond and what would have helped elicit a response from them. Then we can use this information to help the public be better prepared in the future.
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