I saw something today and wondered what to do. When I was upstairs in my bedroom I glanced out of the window and saw a man staggering along the street and then he sat on a wall opposite. At first I thought maybe he was unwell so I watched him for a while. However as he sat he was shouting obscenities, loud and crude. He then was trying to make his way along the path and to be honest , it was something like a from a comedy show. He continued to bellow and kept spitting as well. I found myself watching him for sometime as it made me feel anxious. People did pass him periodically and one person stopped to check if he was OK but he just kept shouting vile abuse. I went downstairs and looked out again about 20 minutes later and he was still there. When I checked again about 15 minutes after that he was gone. He was not actually doing me any harm but what do you do? I wondered if you should call the police, get him moved along but is that wasting police time? If you were to approach him , could he be armed and would you suffer any repercussions? I really dislike situations like that, being subjected to other peoples bad manners/behaviour especially when you have children with you. What do you think ?
Horray, I can comment on your blog again.
ReplyDeleteIt's a difficult one this. I guess getting drunk and abusive is self inflicted and I would just let them get on with it. Like you say, getting police involved could be wasting their time. Guess I'd only call the police if they started to hit out at someone. Like I said, it's a difficult one.
Sounds like he could have been dangerous. If I was alone, I definitely wouldn't have approached him. If my husband were home, I'd let him handle it. Best to stay locked tight inside the house when you've got yourself and your kiddo to protect.
ReplyDeleteAs far as calling the police, I would say do it. They don't mind when they get called out for such things, it's just a part of their jobs. My Brother-in-law is a cop and he got a call from a restaurant the other night because a cat was in their outside garbage can!
Don't ever get personally involved or let your loved ones. Life is too precious.
ReplyDeleteSft x
I was gardening the other day and a very drunk man appeared in the garden demanding I call an ambulance because he was "F**king p**sed".
ReplyDeleteI got Jon to come out and it turned out he'd just come back from his mother's funeral. We gave him some water and Jon walked him back to his house (which was a couple of miles away).
I felt sad for him. x
Thanks for all your comments. Its hard to know what to do for the best.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty open minded and am not bothered if they are not hurting someone or themselves. To me words are words. I used to work in a juvenile detention centre and with teens coming down from heroin with a colourful vocabulary. When we see people carrying on I usually explain to my daughter that their brain is sick due to something bad that happened in their lives and they can't control themselves so either they need help or just need to be left alone. We have a few drunks in our street and they often wave hello to us when they're not carrying on. (we live near a homeless food kitchen).
ReplyDeleteIf someone is hurting someone, I ALWAYS get involved. I want my daughter to know that we are all responsible as humans on this planet and turning a blind eye means we condone the violence. She has witnessed me get involved many times to stop men bashing women or the likes.
At the moment we have a neighbours boyfriend who is really nice when sober and threatens abuse with colourful language when he is on the grog. On some night he's outside the windows carrying on and breaking stuff and wakes us all up. I usually go out and tell him to shut up, move on and to chill out (sometimes with a broom just in case). Last week, after a few sleepless nights I caught him while he was sober, I marched up and told him in my very STERN voice how angry I was at his drunken behaviour and was not going to tolerate it anymore as it was very scary for my whole family and the rest of the block. He was embarrassed and said he would try to stop the drink because he realised he had a problem... all is quiet now... but... we will see.
Interesting topic - I love human rights issues :-)