Down below in this post, I shared a conversation overheard at a coffee shop. I had a chance to talk to a police officer about it, and am finally getting around to actually sharing what he said.
The police officer is a fellow I've known for a year or so. We chat from time to time when we run into each other, and he's a very good guy.
His first comment was that he was glad no one confronted the Disturbing Dad directly. He said without knowing who the man was or what he was capable of, the risk to an ordinary citizen was too great. "What if the guy really was a pimp? He could have been armed, and even if he wasn't armed, he might have reacted violently." A confrontation could have put the whole shop in danger.
The cop added that he'd advise a surreptitious call to 9-1-1, but only if it could be done without the guy knowing. He told me from the sound of things the exchange might have happened too quickly for most people to react, let alone successfully sneak off to make a call. "It's one thing if you're trained to deal with child abuse situations, or worse. It's something else if you're an ordinary citizen stopping by Starbucks for a coffee."
One thing he emphasized is that what we heard would not necessarily have resulted in an arrest had the police intervened. He said that had he been called to the scene, he would have separated the father from the daughter and heard what both had to say. At least one other patrol car would also have come, and probably two. They would have tried to get an idea of what was going on. Most likely, he said, the father would try to downplay what he said, claim it was a joke or something said in the heat of the moment he didn't really mean.
"Being a dick in public is not necessarily criminal, even though sometimes we wish it was." That said, at the very least a case file would probably be opened with Family Services, based upon the witnessed exchange. An actual arrest would depend on a number of factors, such as how the father behaved with the police and what the daughter said, as well as any prior history. Furthermore, given the nature of the exchange, there was a good chance there might be a file open on the family already. "The first sign of child abuse isn't too likely to be a scenario like that. There'd probably be a long history building up to something like that."
The officer said the police would also look evidence of compelled prostitution. Maybe he wasn't her father at all, but that's what he made her call him." He thought that was a longshot, but it's not something he would rule out. Once again, not something easy to determine based on the exchange observed, but if the fellow was an actual pimp, he'd probably have a record, and the girl might as well.
Ultimately, the cop emphasized he was speaking hypothetically. There's a whole range of possibilities. "Maybe he was just having a bad day. Sounds extreme, I know, but there are all kinds of unknowns to the situation. The nicest dad on earth can react irrationally to learning his daughter has become sexually active, especially if she is pregnant."
In the end, what I take away from this scenario is that I witnessed something that caught me, and those around me, off guard, disturbed us all, and left us feeling confused and helpless. In the future, I feel I would react differently, but I have to take the officer's words to heart as well.
4 comments:
Pretty interesting and informative. Thank you for sharing it. Context is all-important, as always. I think of the mother of three in Wal-mart, offering candies to her kids to keep them quiet, as abusive or at the least, neglecting. Others would say that was pretty harsh, and I can see their point. In the same vein, many people accept as given that a man can act poorly when faced with his daughter being sexually active, and I myself consider it a very lame excuse, and am not as likely to be forgiving.
Within the context of the society, and whatever their "real" story, the opportunity for the man/father to get away unscathed, and perhaps take out his frustration about being accosted on his daughter/prostitute, is pretty high. And isn't that always the horrible choice facing us? Act, and try to help, and risk causing further hurt to the girl; or sit and observe, and do nothing, and wonder if we have deserted her by our inaction.
It's the kind of thing authors deal with in their work, I hear. *wink*
Excellent follow-up, Bill.
911 is a terrific resource.
Bekbek, I do agree that about it being a lame excuse, and I don't think the cop I talked too thought it would have been a very good excuse either. He offered it more as an example. My sense was that he felt it was an ongoing abuse situation, but he was also careful in his choice of words. He used phrasing like, "It might be that..." a lot. Wise, I think.
One thing your post brought to mind is the idea of our threshold of inaction. At what point in that situation would one of us present have acted had it gone on longer? I think we were mostly frozen by our shock. The next time, our experience may serve to lower that threshold. The asshole shows up at Starbucks again, well, I carry a cell phone with me all the time. 9-1-1 indeed, Mindy!
Your friend is right -aggressively confronting a verbally abusive guy is not a good idea. 911 is a resource we have for a reason - including situations like this. And yes, it's true that the father and daughter (if that was indeed their relationship) would likely have gone through exactly the scenario you described culminating in an open file (i.e. next to nothing would come of it).
On the other hand, when we sit back and do nothing in situations like these we are silently condoning this behavior. I can't tell you how many abused kids I worked with who had had multiple brushes with the law (in terms of abuse allegations)- and the ball has got to get rolling sometime. Inactivity is not a choice I can live with. I can't control what an abusive guy does or says, but I can control what I choose to do about it. And that's almost always going to mean intervention in some form.
Oh crap. I'm back on the effin' soapbox again. Sheesh! Time for a (decaf!!) mocha and some deep breathing exercises...
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