I was at T.'s apartment yesterday when the police officer assigned to her case came over to have her sign some release forms to allow the PD to access her medical records. While he was there, I learned some interesting things, most important of which is that some of the bystanders did try to intervene!!

The area she was in used to be one of the bad parts of town. They are putting a lot of money into developing it and getting the "ghetto" out. Her apartment complex is a gated community with controlled entry and is only one block away. But the area still does attract some of the unsavory types. It turns out that one or two of the bystanders did start to move toward the fight to intervene, but there were two rough-looking guys there who said that it wasn't their (the bystanders') fight and to stay out of it. The unspoken threat there was that those guys wouldn't get involved as long as it was just the girls fighting, but if anyone tried to stop it, they would. The cop called it the "hood mentality". This fact has made me feel so much better about people in general (excepting the "hood" element, of course). In any case, the cop said there are plenty of witnesses and the case is very solid, and that two people from WV are willing to come back to testify if necessary. The cop estimated that one of the girls is looking at a possible 15 years for malicious assault and the other is looking at up to 38 (!) years for malicious assault and abduction.

Ah, re: the abduction thing - I don't think I've explained that. One of the girls told the one who was doing most of the beating that the cops were coming and that they'd better go. The second one got into her car and was going to drive off when T. jumped up and reached in the car to take her keys out of the ignition to prevent her from leaving the scene. The girl grabbed T.'s arm and started driving, with T.'s legs dragging along the ground. She took a turn and let go and T. went careening across the pavement. The bystanders said she came within inches of being run over. The upshot of this, though, was that the other girl was not able to get into the car before her friend took off, and was still at the scene when the police arrived. The cop said that that was a very bold move that not many people would have thought of in the heat of the moment and that, if she hadn't done it, they never would have caught these girls. At the same time, though, it was a huge risk and he wouldn't recommend doing it again. In any case, when she took off in the car like that, it was enough to charge her with abduction.

Both girls have extensive records, with the main attacker having a list of assaults a few pages long. It really is remarkable that T. was not more badly hurt. Her physical wounds from the attack are now mostly healed, but she is still struggling emotionally. Scared to be alone, bad dreams, etc. She is seeing her psychiatrist today.

The preliminary hearing is set for August 31.

I am wishing MANY VERY good things for the both of you.

Thanks for the update - what a story - brave girl.

Glad to hear things are proceeding with the charges... hope your friend continues to feel better...

I hope this all turns out well for you both.

I agree and disagree on the "hood mentality". There is a whole class of people (not just black) who feel the police are intruders and people who call them are snitches. We have periodic issues in this neighborhood -- drug houses, enormous gangs of young people roving the street streets, that sort of thing. Right now it's under control again.

But I see stuff all the time, like I called in a 2p.m. assault when these girls pulled up in front of our house to berate a boy on a bike (black, dreadlocks) who had cheated on one of the girls (white), and a couple other guys showed up to back up the girls. I thought it would go south but the girl just grabbed the boy's dreads and gave him what-for while this tall Shaq-like figure loomed overhead. The cops arrived about 20 seconds after it all broke up, and the girls were all, "I didn't see nothing", of course.

Same location, several weeks ago, we had a cop parked watching for activity down the street at a notorious corner, and this white rural-stoner guy was walking up the sidewalk with his two beautiful, charming little boys in tow. They saw the squad and were talking to each other saying "Cool car!" and "I like cops!" The dad turned on the boys, not ten feet from me doing yardwork, and said in a stern voice, "Nobody in our family likes cops, and if you like cops you ain't in our family, got it?" Well, because I'm built big and weigh too much I can get away with shit like standing up then and saying straight to his face, "That's a terrible thing to teach your kids," and tell the kids, "The cops are the good guys. We all like cops." The guy slunk away. One of these days doing shit like that is gonna get me in trouble, but like Hugh Janus said, your best weapon is your voice....

The piece de resistance here was about three summers back when we were eating a late dinner and I kept hearing continuous voices along our side street. There's always been a lot of pedestrian traffic there, but this was literally non-stop. If the watermelon hadn't been broken out, I would have been outside when the gun was fired.

See, we had a four-unit with a guy on the upstairs porch who was a dealer. There must have been word out of some kind of retaliation, because the street was full of at least 50, maybe 75 or more people milling around (not passing through like usual). The noise was all of these people gathering.

When I heard the gun I yelled out, "Gunshot! Call 911!" and rushed outside (I can distinguish gunshots, fireworks, and backfires fairly easily, alas). By the time I got out there you could already hear the sirens and people were starting to slink away, but the cops were able to stop large knots of them up to a block away from the incident. Eventually they came to us because we had been 911 callers -- out of over 25 people questioned, they didn't get useful information from more than one or two (ironically, the guy got caught because he hid behind a garage, a woman called in a man with a gun but he had already ditched it -- probably passed it off to a friend for disposal). I couldn't describe the guy because he was already gone. In the end charges were dropped because they had no usable testimony or evidence (the guy went back to jail because he got his probation revoked, though). The victim, no great citizen himself, was only grazed when his baseball cap was shot off, and this got him evicted. Long story short, everybody and his brother, black, white and Hispanic, knew there was something going down, because they showed up for it, but none of them would say a damn thing.

Not to hijack your thread, very glad your friend is improving. You might want to consider this book.

Wow Mike. I had missed the orignial thread, which I just read a couple minutes ago. My sypathies to your friend. That is just dreadful. There's nothing more sickening than seeing people lash out with raw agression, anger and hatred. Makes me better about what happened to me friday (see my post) - it could have been a whole shitload worse! I really appreciate your sharing this.

Thank you for the update, Mike. I'm glad to hear she's healing.