Intervening on Behalf of Strangers

A friend of mine was recently involved in a situation where he intervened on behalf of a stranger who had been given one hell of a beating by a group. He then became the target of the group’s leader who went to assault him with a bottle. By a show of force and posturing further violence was avoided, and the group ended up assisting the person who they’d assaulted (a friend!), and walking off with their tails between their legs, after having been given a lecture on the inappropriate use of violence. Whilst the whole incident when condensed into one paragraph may seem to contain the message that violent and aggressive individuals will respond to a stern talking to by a confident and obviously knowledgeable and capable individual (though multiple assailants would test such capability to its most extreme limits), it really raises two questions: when and how to intervene on behalf of strangers who are the victims/targets of violence?

In my experience (and experience is a limiting factor), of the times I have intervened on behalf of others I have always found that the individuals involved knew each other, and had “legitimate” grievances against each other – there was never a case of one or a group of individuals beating on a complete stranger (I’m not saying this doesn’t happen just that I’ve not experienced it). On one occasion in Sunderland – a very tough city in the North East of England – late at night, a friend and myself, came across a man repeatedly bouncing a woman’s head of the glass windows of a shop front (probably the only time I’ve ever seen a classic Bart Simpson two handed choke applied to a person’s throat). My friend asked if we should intervene and I said that we really didn’t have a choice as I didn’t want to read in the paper the next day that we’d witnessed a killing and done nothing to intervene.

This is a matter of conscience and personal choice. You fight when you are not prepared to live with the consequences of not fighting. This is the rule I apply whether it involves defending myself or others. If you can live with the consequences of walking away from a fight, where the violence and aggression was directed at you because your ego can handle it, and you can live with the consequences that is fine, if you can’t you will have no choice but to fight. This is why I teach people to hand over their wallet to a mugger as an act of control, not an act of subservience – when you control the situation and make the choices and decisions governing it, you will not live the rest of your life questioning whether you should have handed it over. When you can “control” the situation through your actions, and walk away without having to “rise” to the apparent challenge made to you, you will be able to live with the consequences of not fighting – there are none; you applied an effective strategy that allowed you to survive the situation.

Put out of your head the idea that the martial arts exist to teach you how to dispense justice on others, they are there to teach you how to survive. Is it wrong that a mugger can take your wallet at gun point? Absolutely. Does your training exist to teach said mugger a lesson? No. Is it wrong that a person can be taken hostage and demand money for their release? Absolutely. Do government agencies and the like pay ransoms to such groups? Of course they do. There is a time for justice and a time for survival. Don’t confuse either the time for each or the role(s) you play in them.

I would argue that when you see a woman being smashed around and in immediate danger you have an obligation to intervene – this incident occurred pre-mobile phones, so there was no opportunity for my friend to call the police (and an ambulance) whilst I attempted to deal with the immediate danger. My course of action was to tap the guy on the shoulder and in a polite but firm tone, say “Excuse me sir, if you could stop doing that we’d like to talk to you.” This is the type of language and tone that the British Police use, and I wanted to try and break him out of his frenzy as he was highly emotional. Immediately he stopped and as he turned around he said, “Thank f*ck you’re here this bitch has stolen my keys”. It turns out – he told me all of this before it finally dawned on him that we weren’t police – that the woman, who was his girlfriend, didn’t want to go on to a nightclub with him (this was when pubs and bars in the UK shut at 11 PM), and was refusing to give him back the keys to his house, that he’d given her to look after earlier that evening. This had resulted in a drunken argument and the ensuing violence. As he was telling us all of this his girlfriend realized that we weren’t the police (we’d both just come off working door security and so were dressed in the mandatory black pants, white shirt and jacket), and started to scream and shout at us. This has been another consistent experience of intervening on behalf of others; that they quickly side with their assailant, whether they are their partner or simply a friend – this is a simple matter of survival – they don’t want to be the reason that their assailant, who they have some long term relationship with, takes a potential beating. This would potentially be another notch against them and another reason for further later abuse.

The woman’s screaming and shouting, started to attract people, including some of the boyfriend’s friends, and the situation quickly started to change. Whereas before my friend and I had numerical advantage that started to turn against us. The other issue we had was that one of the friends was clearly the more dominant individual and was prepared, in fact looking to get involved. This is something to understand about group violence. The boyfriend had used up his adrenaline by now and was no longer in a heightened emotional state, he just wanted to walk away; there was no real fight left in him and his appetite for violence was by and large gone. His friend however was in a different emotional state. He was just coming to the scene and was ready to go. It is worth understanding that in group situations different people can become adrenalized and emotional at different times, and perpetuate confrontations, which by and large are dead.

I was still talking to the boyfriend but heard my friend say something along the lines of, “well if it’s all under control, we’ll be going”. I then received a firm pull on my shoulder and we both walked off. We’d maybe got 20 yards before the shouting and abuse started; directed at us. Then we heard the footsteps and saw that we were being followed by a large group and ran. Fortunately the group only made it about 20 yards before stopping. They’d proved their point and were happy to get on with their evening and to talk about how they’d seen off, humiliated, made to feel small etc. the two idiots that had tried to cross them etc.

When I look back on such incidents, and the situations where I have intervened on somebody’s behalf I end up getting depressed (however to be fair I get that sense whenever I look back on any aggressive and violent confrontation). Whilst it may at first seem a selfless action, it isn’t. You get involved in another person’s fight because you can’t live with the consequences of not doing so – you have no idea whether the person you are defending is a good person or a bad one e.g. a pedophile who has been raping children in the neighborhood etc. and once you have stood up for them, if you stand down you are condoning the incident you sought to stop. In saying all of that, I have never regretted the times I have stepped in, either as a professional or just a concerned citizen.

In the age of the mobile phone a 911 or 999 call should be your first course of action. Whether you directly intervene to “slow” down an incident till the police arrive, or stand back is your choice, and I would never pressurize anyone to act. If a third person is in imminent danger, and you believe you have the means to prevent serious injury and/or death you need to consider your response and whether you can live with the consequences of not acting – there is no right or wrong answer.