Cops said it appeared that the man had randomly approached the teen as she walked into the lobby of the W. 180th St. building. The victim said her kidnapper dragged her outside by the arm, where he hailed a livery cab on Broadway. On the way, she said, she tried to "catch people's eyes, but every person I walked by was listening to music."We should be safe when the streets are crowded with people. That is the community that should be protecting us. But are all those people really there, or somewhere else? We're all abstracted.
"I kept asking him, 'Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?'" she said, sitting safely between her parents in their apartment.
In "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," Jane Jacobs writes:
Some of the safest sidewalks in New York City... at any time of day or night, are those along which poor people or minority groups live....
[T]he public peace -- the sidewalk and street peace -- of cities is not kept primarily by police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves... No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down.
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The only place more dangerous for a young woman than the streets of New York City is to be behind the locked doors of her apartment in Madison Wisconsin.
"Some of the safest sidewalks in New York City... at any time of day or night, are those along which poor people or minority groups live...."
I live in a poor and minority populated neighborhood, the kind that Jacobs is describing in its heyday. Unfortunately the civilization which Jacobs describes has long since collapsed, partly because the powers that be decided that the neighborhoods in question weren't capable of civilization in the first place and needed the State to step in and take over. Of course, their solution was to inject the poison of welfare and central planning and finish off the destruction that Robert Moses sstarted when his BQE sliced through the hearts of many of these poor and minority neighborhoods. We now have random machete attacks, rapes, daylight stabbings, open drug dealing, fights, shootings... And the streets are always full of people playing dominoes and not listening to their iPods, people who conveniently evaporate when something goes down because they're either complicit or afraid.
That violent, brutish behavior is the norm in my neighborhood, even among families or romantic couples, I don't know that I would have registered the behavior of this kidnapper and his victim as out of the ordinary. People don't want to get involved in situations that they don't understand and unless the girl was screaming "help me!" how would a stranger have known what was going on?
We taugth our daughter to scream bloody murder, although she really didn't need much teaching.
My martial arts sensei talks about environmental awareness.
My wife, a former psych nurse, talks about getting ones head out of ones ass and paying attention to ones surrounding because the world is full of psychos.
Good thing she wasn't Kitty Genovese.
Unfortunately the civilization which Jacobs describes has long since collapsed, partly because the powers that be decided that the neighborhoods in question weren't capable of civilization in the first place and needed the State to step in and take over.
Ah yes, let's fondly remember the good 'ol days before we depended on the State to take care of our neighbors and everyone relied on each other for their safety. Why the old Italian neighborhoods in New York were known for how safe they were. Unless of course you weren't paying your protection money, or had your garbage picked up by the wrong company or hired the wrong electrician or broke any number of unwritten laws.
Sometimes you people just live in a fantasy world.
Hey Freder you douche you would never say that about a black or Hispanic neigborhood you stupid prick.
Mille cazzi nel tuo culo.
"Sometimes you people just live in a fantasy world."
There is no Freder Frederson in my fantasy world. Sadly that's what makes it only a fantasy.
"Hey Freder you douche you would never say that about a black or Hispanic neigborhood you stupid prick."
Freder wouldn't survive an evening in a black or Hispanic neighborhood. As far as I'm concerned, that's a mark in favor of black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
If you ever step into my neighborhood, Freder, there is going to be water up your nose. A board will also be involved.
Doesn't anyone want to talk about the effect of iPods on public safety?
What about when people hear you but deliberately ignore you? I had that experience not on the streets of New York but in the supposedly decent human midwest, in Minneapolis to be specific: I was lost and on foot and all I wanted was to get directions from someone on the street but twice, once from a pedestrian and once from a teen riding by on a bike, I was deliberately ignored as I approached them and spoke. There are a lot worse places than New York to rely on "the kindness of strangers," to quote Tennessee Williams.
It's much more interesting observing the effect of Freder Fredersen on civil discourse.
"Doesn't anyone want to talk about the effect of iPods on public safety?"
No!
Jacobs says it's eyes that matter. But you're saying it's ears that matter.
So I think these are totally different.
A city of blind people with functional ears would be more safe than a city of deaf people with functional eyes.
But the people also have to have the moral courage to get involved in a possible abduction, or to prevent a crime that's about to happen.
This may be the thing that's rarest today, especially in some neighborhoods.
Can you teach moral courage?
Lutherans teach it via the Ten Commandments, which have positive corollaries. You will go to hell if you don't help people keep their lives and property. Not only should you not take these things, you have the duty to help prevent other people from losing them.
I think that in some neighborhoods it's everybody for themselves, and the devil take the hindmost.
So it's not just eyes and ears. It's also moral bearings.
The story sounds fishy to me.
This story sounds fishy to me as well. One problem is that most people don't have iPods or walk around listening to music despite the delusion of techno-nerds who believe everyone is into gadgets.
"Doesn't anyone want to talk about the effect of iPods on public safety?"
I think the main safety effect of the iPod is on the wearer. At least out here, in a Puget Sound area suburb with few sidewalks, the icon of the suicidal bicyclist has been replace by that of the suicidal iPod-wearing walker/jogger, lost in their own (loud) little world as they walk down the (wrong) shoulder totally oblivious to anything large that could injure them.
Soon, once a critical mass of silent-running hybrids is on the road, I expect we'll have a massive die-off of this particular sub-species.
Prof A.
Story does not compute. Maybe Mom & Dad & The Daily News reporters, or someone who wants to make a point about the loneliness of NYC & its cold, cold heart, or bring back Kitty Genovese as Bissage suggests, are buying, but not me.
Guy grabs 14 yr old girl on W 180 St. Everyone in this neighborhood is listening to music on the I-pod, so no one sees her resisting.
Perp forces her into cab & driver doesn't see what's up, that is, a guy forcing a kid into his cab. Her face was placid, right? C’mon. Wash Heights, just below Inwood, is full of people who'd notice this. I had a pizza on B'way & 179th a few yrs ago before walking across the GWB & most people, while, in typical NYC fashion, avoiding eye contact, seemed alert.
Then, tho the cabbie later calls 911 when she bolts out of the cab, initially, he drives her & the perp across the Washington or Hamilton Bridge to the Bronx & then goes up to Woodlawn (North Bronx) & never hits a light? And, perp leaves girl in cab while he goes to get a room, assuming that the force has power over weak minds I guess. Are we making up a story for mom & dad?
Sat Nite Live had a skit where no NYT reporter had any idea about Alaska & Palin 'cause none of them had ever been North of 120th on the UWS or 96th on the UES, except on the Henry Hudson or FDR going to Tanglewood or something.
Reality mirroring fiction, or beyond parody: these Daily News reporters have no idea of NYC beyond their offices where they contemplate Obama's coming.
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