No one helped Tim McLean

[Atash Hagmahani]

Tim McLean was the chap who was stabbed, decapitated, and partially eaten by a stranger on a Canadian inter-city bus in an unprovoked attack (I will give the victim that it was an unprovoked attack, despite the media feeling the need to qualify that assessment...according to eyewitness accounts the victim was leaning against the window, sleeping...hardly provocative except as an easy target...).

Nobody helped him. Instead, the other passengers ran for it.

By the time police arrived, it was too late to do anything for the victim; he'd already had his head cut off. The odd part is, however, that HEAVILY ARMED RCMP OFFICERS DID NOTHING until backup arrived. You can see/hear it on tape. The purpetrator was apparently trapped on the bus by nothing more than a sheet wrapped around the door handle or something like that. It appears that he had no plans to escape which was probably the only reason they caught him.

I would guess from what information has been released that the victim was chosen in part for his small build. Easy target. According to the reports, the purp was probably bigger, estimated 6 feet tall.

The victim was 19 years old.

Another aspect of this case worth considering: Canada has gun control laws and perhaps some 911-ish screening as in the USA (I got patted down last time I was on an inter-city bus). Yet the knife got through. So really, there is no protection against armed attacks from other passengers.

Up to now, there probably hasn't been a need for such. However, every time a crime happens, it opens the door to copycat crimes.

What did people do before school massacres? The first one I am aware of, that fit the modern pattern (ie, not outsiders attacking a school as a terrorist target as the "Partisans" did in Spain) was the Brampton Centennial Secondary School shooting in Brampton, Canada, in 1975. The early attack (#2 in North America) that sticks out in my mind for the amount of publicity it generated was the case of Brenda Ann Spencer ("I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."..."I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun"; "It was just like shooting ducks in a pond"'..."[The targets] looked like a herd of cows standing around; it was really easy pickings.")

At first it was just North America, but then they started spreading. Once a type of crime happens, it opens up the minds of people prone to doing that sort of thing that they could commit the same kind of crime--the new concept has come into existence.

Now, one more troubling fact (to my mind): the purpetrator has been charged with 2nd-degree murder, rather than 1st degree. Here are the definitions:

   1. First degree murder is a murder which is (1) planned and deliberate, (2) contracted, (3) committed against an identified peace officer, (4) while committing or attempting to commit one of the following offences (hijacking an aircraft, sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping and forcible confinement or hostage taking), (5) while committing criminal harassment, (6) committed during terrorist activity, (7) while using explosives in association with a criminal organization, or (8) while committing intimidation. [32]
   2. Second degree murder is all murder which is not first degree murder.

Note the OR. Any one of the 8 criteria should do the trick. Now, if it wasn't 1st-degree murder, then apparently the courts have decided that the attack was not "planned and deliberate".

Um...

Why did he just happen to have a butcher knife handy? Why did he, according to witnesses, have a look at the victim and then go set next to him (as if having assessed him as an easy target)?

So, I think it is safe to assume that the reduced charges are a result of agendas that have nothing to do with objective facts in the case. Let's look at the difference between the penalties for 1st and 2nd degree murder, according to wikipedia:

   1. First degree murder - mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 25 years (can be paroled under the Faint-Hope Clause after 15 years imprisonment, but such a reduction is rarely given and is not available for multiple murders)
   2. Second degree murder - mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 10-25 years (parole eligibility determined by the judge at sentencing) (exception: if the person had committed another murder in their past, parole eligibility is 25 years)

So the big difference is the prospects for parole. The purpetrator, Weiguang Li, has been given a chance at parole in 10 years (I wonder how firm that is).

Interestingly, under Canadian law, someone can NOT be classified as a "dangerous offender" if he is charged with 1st or 2nd degree murder, and therefor is not subject to the possibility of perpetual detention as a danger to others.

Unfortunately I think it would be difficult to look up what the consequences of "diminished responsibility due to mental illness" are likely to be, but in other cases it has been another risk. Basically, someone who is VERY dangerous precisely because they are deranged, is considered innocent by reason of insanity, confined to a mental ward for a while, and then released into some sort of "community-based treatment".

[opsec]

The trouble here is that everybody on that train knew that if they did help that guy that they would be charged with a crime and face prison time for doing so. Anymore people fear the legal system more than they fear the criminal element. The result is that the nature of crime is becoming more sinister and debauched because criminals know that the legal system intimidates the public into passivity.

[Kitteh]

To play devil's advocate here, are we assuming everyone on this bus is strong?  Not all of these people might have been cowards.  Some of them might simply have not had any good options in that situation.

I remember arguing with a man who complained that dogs were better than cats because when he was abused as a child, his dog stood up to his abuser and his cat ran away.  What exactly did he expect the cat to do in that situation?  Stand up against a human 20 times it's size and get killed?  The dog was two thirds the size of the human so the Dog had a shot of actually doing something.  If the dog had been one of those "yip" dogs and stood up, he would have been promptly killed and it wouldn't have done anyone any good.  Standing up would have been a sign of stupidity, not bravery.

Now, I carry mace, and I have used it in the past and I will use it in the future.  I like to think that in that situation, I'd mace the heck out of the guy.  But if I left my mace at home that day? I'd be running and calling the police with everyone else.  My husband has been in a situation not quite that severe (someone tried to mug a friend of his) and he clocked the guy with his book bag (Engineering books are useful for so many things).  But he's a young, strong man and he'd never dream of expecting me to do the same thing. 

I do try to help others to the best of my abilities, but my main weapons are my mouth and my brain.  When those options are taken from me, I run.

Just my perspective. 

[Atash Hagmahani]

The reason that I frequently comment about "Kitty Genovese" scenarios is not to cast judgment or blame (the blame lies squarely with the purpetrator), but to keep people conscious of what is going on, and what they can expect in a similar situation.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/kitty_genovese/

Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death--over a long interval during which there would have been plenty of time to help her--in front of 38 witnesses who did almost nothing (one person is reported to have shouted "hey, leave that girl alone").

Here is a "gedanken" experiment for you: during a riot, people become VERY brave. They attack heavily-armed police or soldiers. Now, as for your "not strong" witnesses--consider that during Seattle's WTO riots we had a fairly old, petite, female radical, Judy Nicastro, getting herself arrested for violent attacks on deleaguates. The difference is that she was part of a group of about a couple dozen members of the Communist Youth Brigade ("break the chains...unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution"); even though the police did eventually round them up and arrest them. Once it was realized she was a city council member, she was released and charges dropped.

In general, a crowd of people will do what they perceive is socially-acceptable to the group. The rioters feel very brave because they are part of a group that is acting together, and the group actually gives positive feedback for boldness.

But if no quorum develops of willing actors, the group will actually freeze up. That's probably what happened to Kitty Genovese. Nobody would do anything, because nobody would do anything. Nobody wants to act outside what is perceived as "socially acceptable", as strange as this may seem.

The degree to which humans will conform to what they perceive to be the expectations of the group (rightly, or more likely, not) is astonishing. As few as 3 or 4 people all claiming a wrong answer in a group will cause about 25% of the population to change their right answer to the wrong answer, even though it is obviously wrong.

This is how you get situations in which one attacker who say is armed only with a knife is able to massacre victims who significantly outnumber him, and also situations in which the attacker has a gun, but the victims actually cooperate with the killer all the way to the end, lining up and waiting their turn. As long as nobody does anything, nobody will.

The correct solution, if it looks like you have nothing to lose, is to do SOMETHING. Ideally, several different people shout at the attacker from different directions, until he is sufficiently confused, and someone clobbers him. During the cave of the Patriarchs massacre, the crowd rushed Dr. Goldstein while he reloading, and someone clobbered him with a fire extinguisher.

There are also problems of group identity. North Americans are very alienated from each other. One of the hot button issues of one of the posters here was a situation in which heavily outnumbered police in Portland (acting under the direction of Vera Katz) easily broke up antiwar demonstrations, by going after whom they perceived (probably quite accurately) to be the leaders, and the followers do nothing to defend them except shout inane slogans, (Remember, I'm not judging whether taking on the police is actually a prudent thing to do--probably not--just analyzing the group behaviors and dynamics) whereas in comparable situations in Venezuela (interestingly, despite a highly racially and economically polarized society), the mobs did defend their own members from the police--aggressively.

North Americans seem to be extremely brainwashed. Kris Kimes' attackers were HEAVILY outnumbered (and in fact there were about 200 police officers about 50 feet away, with orders to stand down). In that case, there was a common expectation that it was unacceptable to fight back, or defend members of one's own group, from the attackers. As it was, the next day the local media was aggressively blaming the victims, claiming they provoked the attacks, so this common belief or expectation was congruent with the actual orders from above.

The impetus for these frequent postings and commentaries of mine is to

• set expectations correctly so you know where you stand in a similar situation
• help people understand how the group dynamic can result in paralysis
  
• help people understand just how brainwashed they are
• raise the possibility for different behaviors and outcomes
• analyze some of the motives of criminal courts and "corrections" system, that don't seem to work.

[darwinslair]

maybe this will be seen as stupid......

but two to center mass and if they are still moving raise the barrel about 12" and shoot again.

If you are afraid of guns, learn to use one.  If you need a permit, get one.  If you dont want to be on a purchase list, buy one in a face-to-face transaction privately. (this is legal)

If this seems silly, well, if just one person on that bus had a weapon OTHER than the assailant, this conversation would not be happening.

Of course that was canada (wasnt it?) and there it is more frowned upon to protect yourself.

I am not one to believe that the police are the ones to protect me.  I am more worried about a future where I have to protect myself against police.

Anyway

Tom