Tonight I was driving from work to the library at school. Though I had been stuck in horrific traffic for most of the trip (a journey of 8 miles in 60 minutes), after I crossed the bridge into DC the roads cleared considerably. I was clipping along that lovely blighted strip of land known as North Capitol Street when I noticed something strange, yet utterly familiar. An aside: as a naive country boy plucked up and transferred to a mysterious big city, I was not aware of a certain activity local youths seem to find "fun." It consists of tackling your buddies, just for the hell of it. Sometimes it involves riding halfway up a metro escalator and then pouncing down on your unsuspecting buddy below, bringing him to the ground only inches away from the screaming electrified Metro tracks. All the white people gasp, and tourists are horrified, but it seems to be a big game of tag and I've never seen anyone get seriously hurt.
Well, tonight, I saw something different. As I approached what I think was North Capitol and R St. NE, I noticed two boys, probably 15-16 years of age, run toward what looked to be a homeless man. One tackled him (the other looked like he intended to, but chickened out) with the apparent intent of knocking him into an oncoming car (which would have been the car in front of me). After he was flattened, the man just lay there on the asphalt, motionless, while the two boys happily ran back to a group of about 15 (no lie) other kids standing on the corner and the cars kept shooting by. This all happened in a space of about seven seconds.
I didn't know what to do. At first I honked my horn, because I thought it was just moron kids acting rowdy. When I realized that they had tackled an old homeless man for no other appartment reason than to cause him physical harm for their pleasure, I called the police. I talked to two people on the phone (police and ambulance) and told them what happened, but I felt like it wasn't much help since I didn't know if the man was ok. I couldn't even provide anything more than basic descriptions. "Two black boys, 15 years old?" That's not much of a description, especially in this town. They sent police and ambulance to the scene, but I 'm sure there wasn't much to see when they got there except throngs of people eating take-out in the 30-degree weather.
Should I have stopped? Should I have gotten out to see if the guy was ok? Should I have tried to catch the kids and do something "heroic?" I don't know. Why didn't I stop? Was it fear that I would be attacked, just like he was? Was it because I didn't know what to do? Was it because I thought someone else would handle it? I don't know. Will the police even bother to respond when they have dozens of other calls involving assaults to look into?
I don't know, guys. But the incident shook me and unsettled me, and I guess it should have. Sadly, it's moments like these that bring out a mean streak of vitriolic racist bile that I forget I have at times. I hate to say it, but it's almost like I want an incident like this to happen so my feelings can be validated-- "See, these kids are definitely up to no good."
I don't know what else to say. I hope the poor guy is all right, and I hope the kids who nearly killed him think about what they did before they fall asleep tonight. But in the end it may be me who's up late wondering what exactly the hell went on.
