The security guards stood by while she was beaten

[joesteph]

This news link was posted on another martial arts site, and the video is very complete, from crime to "just standing there" security to a police spokesman explaining the situation.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/crime/2010/02/11/rickslist.seattle.beating.cnn

It's followed by a video that says there were four arrests--after the terrible beating.

[sensei8]

Wow! Company Policy/Rules or not; I'm not going to just stand there while someone gets a beating. Finally, at the very end of the beating, one guard does appear to say something to the girl that's doing the beating.

[joesteph]

Many (Most?) people "Don't want to get involved" or don't think it's their place to intervene, thinking, "Somebody should do something."

What's been discovered in social psychology is a numerical factor, that the more people present when there's a situation calling for help, the less chance there is for help to be given. The classic study is the murder of Kitty Genovese, and the term "bystander effect" applies here.

If there were just one security guard present, instead of three to diffuse responsibility among them, while it isn't definite that there would have been intervention, the chance of that guard intervening is higher. There were other people present, making up an onlooking but not intervening crowd, but I'd say that they deferred to the authority figures present, the security guards.

[Soheir]

Yeah, there was this one situation that I read about, it was old though.

A guy stabbed a woman (Kitty Genovese) in a park (New York City, Queens) at three o'clock in the morgning.. Someone called a police at some point, yes! ...but, that was after the woman was already dead. After all, thirty-eight people were Watching, literally watching, this whole incident from their homes. And finally a woman from some apartment called cops, After she had called her friend to ask her what should she do.

And another one too:

In New York, Bronx, an 18 year old operator was raped and beaten up while she was alone in her office. she got to run away for a moment, and ran out on the street, naked and bleeding, yelling for help. Approximate forty people gathered at once, and stared in the middle of the Day, how the raper tryed to drag her back to the office, and not one tryed to help her on any way. At least, two cops happened to walk by, and went to help.