Some people are not able to do anything about a crime they see being committed, and that does not make them a bad person.

A decent good person will respect another's person's right to make their own decisions about whether or not to get involved and a good and decent person does not try to judge others or lay some stupid guilt trip on them for not trying to do the job of a police officer or for not reporting their neighbors for jay walking or for some other stupid useless CSS code being violated.

This is a free country and we have a right to DO NOTHING and mind our own business. And we do not have to talk to the police either.

The rule of thumb in this, our growing police state, is to never talk to the police for any reason.

They will use everything you say against you, and they will lie to you and pretend you are not a suspect when you are, and they will put you in danger testifying against vicious violent criminals and they will not protect you from your abusive spouse, especially if he is a police officer.

Don't trust a gang of thugs not to kill you if you try to stop them from shop lifting, and don't trust the police to protect you if you decide to be a witness to a crime.

If you expect to survive in the Jungle they call the "big city" youi should learn not to do something stupid.

That said, if I had a weapon, a gun or a knife, and I saw a man assaulting a child or woman, and I thought I was capable of helping without getting myself killed, I may come to the rescue but I am glad that it is my decisions alone whether or not I will do that. I might make a lot of noise or take pictures for the police if I can't do anything else to intervene but I think it is more important to stop the crime than to report it later.

I will take immediate action if I see a child or pet left alone in a car in the hot sun, and I may even smash a car window to get them out.

Other than some living person or animal being in danger, I will usually mind my own business and let them steal your car.

Hopefully you have insurance for that.

Yup don't try and stop shoplifters because they are going to come kill you You might want to fill the over 2,000 shoplifters I have stopped in over 14 years.

You don't need a gun or a knife to help someone in distress. Everyone now days is weapons crazy and think they have to have a weapon to do anything.

And the reason I don't stop shop lifters is because its not my job.

And I would not be stupid enough to go after a gang of thugs stealing beer from a quick shop either.

The 73-year-old woman who was raped in Central Park said Friday that when she encountered a man masturbating in the wooded Ramble area two weeks ago,she not only took hisphotograph, but alsoreported what she saw to a park ranger
“Some of the newspapers mentioned that afterI saw the guy masturbating, I didn’t report it. I did.I reported it,” the woman said in an interview outside her apartment on the Upper West Side.“There was a park ranger who came by,and I stopped him immediately and showed him the picture. And I said: ‘Look at this picture. This guy is in the Ramble.’ And the ranger said, ‘Oh, O.K.,I’ll look out for him.’”
The rangers, who work for the New York City parks department, are not law-enforcement officers, but assist park visitors in various ways. The ranger walked toward the Ramble, and the woman believed she had done all she was supposed to.
“I felt that was enough,” she said.
Vickie Karp, a spokeswoman for the parks department, referred questions about whether the victim approached a ranger and what rangers’ responsibilities in such situations are to the Police Department.
Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, did not return an e-mail asking if the department was aware that the woman, according toher, had alerted a park ranger after shespotted the man masturbating. Mr. Browne said earlier this week that the situation had not been reported to thepolice.
The man whom the woman photographed is accused of raping and beating her in a brazen daylight attack near Strawberry Fields, south and west of the Ramble, on Wednesday. The assault was preceded, the police said, by a question from the attacker: “Do you remember me?”
The suspect, David Albert Mitchell, a 42-year-old drifter with a history of violence against women, was charged with rape. He was also accused of stealing the woman’s camera and other photo equipment.
A camera is something that the woman said she always carried in herhand while in the park.
She has been an avidbird watcher for years, drawn to the Ramble, as are so many others, by the variety and quantity of birds found there.
But she also was not afraid to train her camera on people she regarded to be breaking park rules, often snapping photographs of those who let their dogs run off-leash, bicyclists riding on park paths designated for pedestrians, and children in rowboatswithout parental supervision or life jackets, she said.
“No photographer walks around with a camera in a bag,” said the woman, who is an unofficial guardian of the parkshe cherishes. “It’s like a gun. You pick it up and shoot.”
She keeps a photography blog, which primarily chronicles her bird sightings.
But she sometimes uses her blog as a kind of wall of shame. She posted a photo of a man who let his dog run unleashed and wrote: “All around the park, there are signs, ‘Dogs must be on leashes at all times.’ Try and tell this owner. Rules don’t apply to him.”
The woman scoffed at a description of her in an article this week in The New York Times in which a park maintenance worker said he thought he knew her, describing her as “a nice old lady” who always sits on abench.
She described herselfinstead as an active person who is always on the move in the park.
The woman saw an ophthalmologist on Friday. She has a fractured eye socket as well as a broken finger on her right hand. Both of her eyes were bloodshotand ringed with purplish and blue bruises on Friday, and she wore large sunglasses. She said she felt nauseated by anti-H.I.V. medication that doctors prescribed, aroutine course of treatment for rape victims.
As for Mr. Mitchell, the man accused of assaulting her, his life has long been filled with violence, dating to when he was a teenager growing up in southern West Virginia. He has spent much of his adult life in prison.
In 1989, he was charged with raping and murdering an 87-year-old woman, Annie Parks, in his hometown, Jenkinjones, W.Va., but was found not guilty. Several months later, he wascharged with raping and robbing a 70-year-old woman in a nearby town. Hepleaded guilty and served 10 years in prison.
Mr. Mitchell was also described by investigators as a person of interest in the murder of a woman in West Virginia in 2002, according to the West Virginia State Police, but there wasnot enough evidenceto charge him.
Mr. Mitchell was one of about a dozen siblings, and his father was a coal miner, said Rebecca Lewis, 46, who grew up near the Mitchellsand whose sister married one of Mr. Mitchell’s brothers. When Mr. Mitchell was in Jenkinjones during his short stints out of prison, Ms. Lewis said, he lived on disability payments and would“tell everybody he got a ‘crazy check.’ ”

Damn !!! I never read the handbook. I do more than observe and report. Have arrests for theft, assault, narcotics, attempted bank robbery. Including one with nation wide warrants.

That's a little more than observing and reporting I think.

I have cleaned this thread up. STOP with the personal attacks

Kim

According to the reports, he (David Albert Mitchell) has a long history of such behavior. At 42 and several years in prison for past crimes, id say his next rape will probibly happen to him when he returns to prison.