166 People Watched Jose Sanchez Suffer
A week ago, I stepped outside a restaurant on 14th Street NW. A man was standing on the corner. And then all of a sudden he wasn't. He was flat on his back. A car pulled up. The driver rolled down his window and shouted to the man:
"Are you all right?"
I looked at the driver. I looked at the man. The driver idled and idled. He waited for someone to do something. I wandered over to the man's side. I didn't get that close. But I asked if he needed help, if he needed paramedics. I waited like a good 30 seconds for him to answer. He didn't. He just stared up blankly into the night sky.
I turned away and called 911. I was put on hold. By the time the dispatcher came on, a police cruiser had pulled up to the corner.
Two years ago, I saw a group of kids beat the crap out of another kid just up from MLK Avenue SE. I mean this kid was getting stomped. I sped past the kids, pulled over and called 911.
I say all this not because this was a big deal. I say this because I felt like a weenie. It felt very strange to call the police on people. We've been told over and over again by D.C. Police and District officials that we shouldn't clog up 911 with lame calls. It has to be important. The police have important stuff to do. I have been told by cops that they have to go on so many lame radio runs that it takes up too much time from real police work like making arrests, etc.
So it's interesting that so much has been made about the 166 people that passed by their fellow citizen in need in Columbia Heights. Today, Fisher has an amazing analysis of the videotape. He writes:
"Eventually, a worker in the Pan Am International market called for an ambulance, which came promptly. As soon as the medical team arrived, 22 people gathered to watch as the man was placed on a stretcher. Jose Sanchez, 31, died three days later from brain injuries suffered when he fell to the pavement."
What happened to Mr. Sanchez was tragic. And the people who passed him by should be ashamed of themselves. While the suspects in the Sanchez case have now been charged, the incident continues to stir debate.
Fisher interviews residents along 14th Street about why nobody went to Mr. Sanchez's aid. Some of the answers feel legit: We see men lying on the street all the time. True. People were afraid to stop. That's entirely possible but, damn, if that's not a really lame excuse.
Fisher writes:
"Call them reasons, call them excuses — whatever their name, they are legitimate yet insufficient. Yes, some passersby were hurrying to get food for their families, and some have cause to fear the police or the drunks, and some are sick of seeing people who lack self-respect urinating and sleeping on the sidewalk.
But a person was flat out on the ground, dying. You are obliged to act."
5:12 pm
How are people supposed to know that this man way dying in the street. I don't mean to sound callous, but if I woke up every person who was lying on a sidewalk, I would have a lot angry high/drunk people to deal with. 99 times out of 100, you would probably find a person who was drunk or just sleeping. I agree that this person should not have died, but I honestly don't know what the answer to the above conundrum is.
5:20 pm
Let me ask you this, Jason: How many times have you walked by someone lying on the sidewalk and personally stopped and checked to see if they needed help?
So you accept the fact that there are people lying around that stretch of fourteenth street, drunk or passed out, all the time, but yet you still call it a "lame excuse"?
Do you really think not one of 166 people would have called the police if there was any indication that this guy needed help, as opposed to just sleeping it off like you see there all the time?
Since I frequent the Red Derby which is in that immediate area, I can tell you that is just not the case. I have witnessed multiple incidents - fights, injuries, incidents in which help was needed. Not only have I personally called 911 in response to one of these, and seen others do the same many times, but people are always quick to get personally involved to help a stranger if help is needed right then.
You need to get over the fact that life isn't perfect, this is not Chevy Chase, and seeing someone lying on the sidewalk in that neighborhood is commonplace. It would be great if we had the resources to call the police or an ambulance to check every single drunk guy when we see one, but frankly, I'd rather that the police and ambulances were available for the situations that are actually likely to require their assistance.
5:30 pm
Jamie: your comment makes no sense. You have the same attitude that the paramedics had when they checked in on David Rosenbaum. They thought he was just drunk. He ended up dying.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/24/AR2006022401676.html
5:44 pm
Wow Jamie. What a callous response, I would hate to have a diabetic attack and have you anywhere in the vicinity. I saw an obviously drunk homeless guy lying in the street after having fallen out of his wheelchair. I promptly flagged down a firetruck. Its called compassion - you never know what really happened to the person.
5:44 pm
You didn't answer my question, Jason. How many times have you walked by a drunk on the sidewalk in DC? How many times have you stopped and checked to see if they needed help? Finally, how many times have you called 911 when you've seen a drunk on the sidewalk?
Your analogy makes no sense. A paremedic's job is to determine whether someone needs help, and they failed to do that when they had been called to do exactly that. What does that have to do with whether or not a citizen is able to properly asses whether a person lying on the sidewalk needs help?
Think for one minute what would happen if everyone called 911 every time they walked by a drunk person. That is, essentially, what you think should have happened if those people weren't all a bunch of callous jerks. There are hundreds if not thousands of drunk people lying around the city somewhere every day, and thousands of people walk by them every day. That's a lot of 911 calls.
The bottom line is, things slip through the cracks sometimes and this is unfortunate. But there is no easy solution, and it is unreasonable that you should hold people to a ridiculously high standard that you certainly do not yourself meet.
5:48 pm
There's a difference between a drunk and Mr. Sanchez. There just is. No one calls every drunk in. I work in Adams Morgan and live a few blocks from work. I think you are a very sad person to just throw your hands up and say "things slip through the cracks."
Go back to Chevy Chase!
5:49 pm
@Jsays, that is far from the same thing. Do you actually ever go somewhere that a lot of homeless or drunk people hang out? Are you telling me that every single time you walk by someone who appears to be passed out on the sidewalk, you check them to see if they're all right?
If that is true then you are Mother Theresa and I salute you.
I am not being callous. I am trying to get across the message that walking by a person who simply appears to be passed out, does not a jerk one make.
Though Jason hasn't told me his track record on checking the pulse of every drunk lying on the sidewalk he's seen, I bet there is not a single person reading this column who can say they've done that every time they walk by someone --- or even a single time.
So go ahead and throw stones, but you better check to see what your house is made of.
5:50 pm
And how would we know the difference, Jason? Spidey sense? Telepathy? You still haven't answered my question.
6:00 pm
Spidey Sense! Your argument sucks. If you watch the video tape, Mr. Sanchez does not appear drunk. He appears out cold on the edge of the sidewalk.
Have you ever seen a drunk laying out like that? I've seen them curled up in flower boxes, on grass, even on sidewalks. But not in the way that Mr. Sanchez was.
Your defensiveness is just annoying at this point. It was a tragedy that this man died in front of 166 people. And no one seemed to give a shit until the videotape came out. If you don't feel any shame for this, well, you are just a cold motherfucker.
6:11 pm
Seriously? Yes, I saw the tape. To a passerby, it just looked like there were dudes hanging around a guy lying on the sidewalk. That scene, to someone who had not witnessed the original fight, is absolutely commonplace in that area. I bet you I can get a photograph that is indistinguishable from that scene within a week.
I have never disputed that this is a tragedy. I dispute that 166 people should have acted any differently than they did in this situation. I place blame on the perpetrators, and the people who were there when it happened, but to blame this on everyone is just wrong.
6:41 pm
One more comment, and I apologize for belaboring this because we obviously don't see eye to eye. This will be my last. And I don't live in Chevy Chase, I live two blocks from where the incident occurred.
If that man was by himself, in the middle of the sidewalk, I would have called the police.
If it was late at night, it was cold, and I saw someone passed out and not obviously wrapped in a blanket (e.g. at risk of freezing) I would call the police.
Your last comment seems to indicate that it's OK for us to not do anything for people who appear to be passed out in certain places or certain situations, but not others.
That is the root of my problem with this outrage. To my eyes it is far from clear that this man needed help based on the situation. In the hypothetical situations I describe above, I think most people would do the same. But in this situation, the victim was not alone, and it did not appear from the video that there was any obvious evidence that he was injured.
This scene would not make a reasonable person assume that it was anything other than the usual group of people drinking on the street and one of them had too much.
So we agree that in some situations it's OK to walk by a guy passed out on the street, and we are debating the semantics of whether or not this is one of those situations.
That's a pretty big gray area to be casting around such strong moral judgements in hindsight.
6:47 pm
There are people passed out on DC sidewalks every day. Unless and until the DC cops start enforcing the law on being drunk in public & being passed out on a sidewalk, no one is at fault here - except for the lazy, incompetent DC police & politicians, & of course, the thugs that killed this poor man.
9:41 pm
As someone pointed out in another discussion about this on another blog, the temperature at that time was below 32 degress, so whether or not the preson lying in the ground was merely passed out or was in the state Mr. Sanchez was in, someone...ANYONE...should have called 911. It takes no freaking effort to call 911, give a location and go about your business. They request nothing of you.
And FYI Mr. Gonzales, MPD and DCFD responded immediately, once they were actually called. You can blame both for lots of things, but this is not one of them. The only people who can be blamed for this are the two suspects and the 166 people who just walked by.
10:17 pm
Jason, you have lost all semblance of objectivity in these posts and articles. Are you paid to be a journalist or a Rush Limbaugh style "the city is a cesspool" crank?
Look, I talked to a neighbor and he railed in the video that the problem wasn't that people didn't call it's that PEOPLE OF COLOR didn't call. Get it? He blamed ethical failures on their race!
Is THAT your point?
No, I suppose it's not.
I haven't walked past someone drunk in the street in ages, but I HAVE had four 911 dispatchers refuse to send an ambulance to check on people on the ground and TWO of those incidents were in Cleveland Park and one time the guy on the ground looked to be about 80 years old. Thankfully someone was out of their car faster than me and I could drive on.
Yes, I wrote complaint emails to the mayor all four times and one time they followed up with a call that other people had complained about that same dispatcher.
The reality is that every one of those dispatchers who refused to send an ambulance sounded like either Fred Sanford or Aunt Esther.
It's the DC street culture. People who grew up here are a$$holes and the only decent folks are the gentrifiers. I'm not talking about race, like my neighbor, but I am talking about culture. Which one are you talking about Jason, race or culture?
7:56 am
Could you be anymore unclear in your opening paragraphs? Are you saying the man for whom you called 911 was Jose Sanchez? If so, why not just state that from the outset. Otherwise, the reticence to do so is strange.
10:19 am
Fred It was not Mr. Sanchez. It was just someone else, another man.
10:30 am
It's rather hilarious to watch this argument between Jamie and Jason. Well, more accurately, Jamie and most everyone else.
I've been guilty of walking past passed out people before, generally they were located in places to be expected (bus shelter, under a tree, etc). I can't say for sure what I would have done had I walked past Jose Sanchez, but I'd say there could be a reasonable chance I would have walked past the scene as well.
I call the police for all sorts of things, whether it be gun shots on the corner (double shooting, hooray), or a man passed out on the sidewalk on 16th street. I try to not concern myself over wasting resources, partly because it is up to the dispatcher what priority to give the call, and also I do believe the mantra of "better safe than sorry" applies.
Is it sad that a lot of us have become immune to seeing people laying on the street? Totally. I'm not happy about that at all. I'm not happy about just watching people piss on the side of my apartment building and know there's nothing I can do about it. That doesn't excuse someone dying, obviously. However, I think a lot of people need to get off their high horses about this.
The people who witnessed the fight and did nothing, they should be ashamed of themselves. The rest, it's not as cut and dry.
10:38 am
Why are some of you so reticent to assign shame to the people who walked passed Mr. Sanchez and did nothing. It's interesting how so much anger, anger that has very little to do with Mr. Sanchez comes into play. Anger at some drunk dude pissing on the side of your building, anger at the police for not doing their job, anger at "DC street culture." I just don't get it.
Whoever walked by should feel shame. They did nothing. No matter what--whatever they did in the face of Mr. Sanchez was the wrong thing.
11:01 am
Hey! There's room for only one Dave on this blog. I propose an MC battle; whoever wins gets to keep the moniker.
11:04 am
Dave: Yes. You and the other Dave need to have an MC battle!
11:51 am
I'm rooting for the original Dave.
1:36 pm
Yes, but see mine had a hyperlink on it!
In any event, I'm not saying people who walked past shouldn't feel badly. I think that's fairly obvious. But I think there's a fairly good chance most if not all of us could have done the same thing.
2:20 pm
Well, if it is wrong to walk past a guy on the sidewalk, then take it a step farther. There are drunk guys on 14th Street right now. Today. This instant.
Isn't it wrong to blog endlessly in a nice cozy cubicle when you could be out calling 911 to rally MPD to check on the drunks? You know they're out there, and you're doing nothing about it. So, that's on you. Isn't it?
2:58 pm
Damn straight. The mere threat of an MC battle caused you to add the superfluous S.
All you erstaz Daves,let this be a lesson: don't step to my skillzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
3:40 pm
I think "Dave" wins.
3:58 pm
Whatevs', I'm not all down with the CityPaper comment crowd.
8:18 pm
Spend 24/7/365 calling 911 on people knocked out or passed out or sleeping on the sidewalks in DC. Stay there & be sure the authorities follw up. Have ten people do it. It'll still be a drop in the bucket - & there will still be dozens of people knocked out or passed out or sleeping on the sidewalks on DC.
Jason, it's not "anger" toward drunks or cops or "street culture" or anything else. It's a fact of life: given the current state of DC mental health facilities, the MPD, & the people [who get knocked out or pass out or sleep on the sidewalks], nothing will change.
7:42 am
Whoever walked by should feel shame. They did nothing. No matter what–whatever they did in the face of Mr. Sanchez was the wrong thing.
--------
Jason,
You are writing like a 12 year old, not an adult. You cannot possibly be serious.