During a chemically-induced psychosis, I was convinced people were trying to kill me.  I was convinced because throughout the three-day respite from reality, my mind convinced me the weapon-wielding wannabe-wrongdoers were not hallucinations.  So strong was my belief that my life was at its imminent termination that I spent nearly an entire day running through the building in which I lived, banging on my neighbors’ doors and screaming, “Call 9-1-1!  They’re going to kill me!  They’re going to kill me!  Call 9-1-1!”  I even stopped on man who I knew to speak broken English at best and begged him to call the police. 

He did not place the call.

              Nor did any of the neighbors call the police to report the threat I was proclaiming.

              In hindsight, I am grateful that the police were not called since it would have ended up with my being involuntarily committed for who knows how long a time.  However, I could not help but be just a little bit angry after the fact that, since they did not know my actions were the result of an accidental over-medication, my neighbors chose to not involve themselves in even the most minor way.  How did they know, I asked myself, that my life was not truly in jeopardy?  How would they feel if I elected to ignore their cries for help if and when the time ever came?  How would they have felt if it turned out my pleas were in response to real threat and if that threat ended in my being severely injured or worse?

              When I was walking to the BART station last night on my way to my Detective Fiction class at City College of San Francisco, I noticed a man and woman near the corner of Stockton and Geary Streets.  They were noticeable because he was shouting at her in such a way that it was obvious that she had done something moments before that made him exceptionally angry.  He would step in front of her every time she tried to move and continue his ranting.  He was acting in a manner that suggested that his verbal assault had the very definite potential of evolving into a physical attack; at one point he became so enraged he punched one of the side service doors of Macy’s.  I was not the only one whose attention was captured by the scene; a woman approximately in her 50s stopped to watch the unsavory event.

              Despite knowing that it might mean my being late for class, I stopped to call 9-1-1.

              I told the operator what I was witnessing, where I was and gave physical descriptions of the two parties involved as well as my name and phone number.  I even followed good fifty-yards behind them as they walked down Stockton and turned right on to O’Farrell, with his screaming the entire time.

              Near the end of my call, he noticed me and screamed down the block for me to mind my own business – another fact which I relayed to the emergency operator.  By the time I hung up the phone he walked up to me and used his cell phone to take a close-up picture of me; I can only assume he was going to show the police my photo to the police with the accusation that I was stalking him and his female companion.  I wasn’t concerned because I knew the time stamp would show the photo was taken just seconds after the 9-1-1 call had ended.  Still, I call the emergency line to amend the report to what just happened so the police would know going in they were most likely going to be shown a picture of the person who called in the report, hopefully taking some of the wind out of the angry man’s sails.

              Once I finally resumed my journey to class, I began to think that he might be just the type to get so angry that someone had had the gall to call the authorities about his behavior that he would sit and wait for several hours for that person (me) to return so that he could verbally and/or physically attack him (me).  My thought turned into fear and that fear finally turned to dread.  By the time class was over, I was convinced I was going to have an unwanted confrontation – I pictured myself in a fight; I pictured myself getting stabbed; I pictured myself getting shot.

              Fortunately, the only harm that came to me on the way home from school was as real as the people who I once thought were trying to kill me – it existed only in my mind.

              Even so, I realized that as bad as I would have physically felt if any of those things happened, the emotional and spiritual pain I would have felt had I done nothing would have been far worse.

              If I would have woken in the morning and saw on the news that a woman was severely beaten in Union Square, I would have felt guilty for having ‘minded my own business.’  I would have felt hypocritical at having felt the anger when my neighbors did nothing when I pleaded for them to save me.  I would have felt that I had made no progress in becoming a better human being from that first day I started my new clean and sober life.

              So many times have I seen on the nightly news that residents of any random crime-ridden neighborhood blame the police for the ongoing illegal activities where they live; yet when the police go searching for witnesses, the ‘don’t snitch’ idea immediately comes into play.  People want life around them to be good, but they are unwilling to do anything about it, especially if it means they have to involve themselves in someone else’s ugly personal affairs.

              The time that we refuse to say something when we see questionable and potentially harmful behavior directed at another human being needs to end.  Ignoring threats has to stop.

              I’m not saying that we need to live in a police state.

              On the contrary.

              The truth is that if we all look out for each other, whether we know the person in distress or not, then the need for such overreaching laws will cease.

              Ask yourself: how many times in your own life have you seen something on the train, in the mall, at a restaurant that didn’t seem ‘quite right’?  Moreover, when you saw that thing that you saw, what was it you did about it?  Too many times in my own life the answer to each of those questions respectively been too many things and nothing.  Finally, after each of those times I spent time wondering if anything bad actually happened.

              I am not accusing the man I saw tonight of domestic violence – for all I know, he’s a great guy who just happened to lose his temper at the wrong time and in the wrong place.  For all I know, he has already made amends to the woman by admitting he was wrong and changing his behavior.  For all I know that was the first time he has and ever will lose his temper.  Even if all of these maybes are true – so what?

              If they are true, then no harm was going to come to anyone.  Yes, there would be a small inconvenience imposed on the couple and the police officers, but I see that as a small price to pay to make sure that a fellow human being is kept from harm’s way.

              I’m not writing this with the intent of sending the message, “Hey!  Look at me!  Aren’t I a great guy?”  The truth is, I’m not great for having done what I did – I just did what I had hoped people would have done for me in the past and will do for me in the future if I find myself in a dangerous situation.