Street Justice

The other day I was sitting down to a nice cup of tea and to play with Nadia after work and we heard this high pitched screaming out the window. I noramally would assume this to be noisy teenagers trying to impress each other on the streets however, this sounded a bit different. I went to the window to see a grown man across the street in front of the church scraping trash with a stick onto the road. This would be normal if the man was scraping the trash with the stick off the road. This is how people clean the streets in the morning. This man was in disheveled, torn clothes, without shoes and looked like he had not had a bath for some time. Every so often if someone or something passed to close to him he would go into a frenzy, throwing rocks and clods of dirt at various targets and screaming at the top of his lungs. Crazy? Maybe. He could be an old war veteren, possessed or on drugs, all common things here that would make a man do such things. In any case, it was sad to watch. I was actually glad that I had returned recently. I had been out with Nadia to buy some vegetables, passing right by where he had been. We often see homeless, psychologically different individuals but normally they are harmless and in their own world.

This man was getting dangerous, however. I watched as a car tried to park near and he started launching rocks at it. People watched but did not do anything about it. What could they do, he may hurt someone. The car moved realizing the danger. I then watched a car pass on our busy street and at about 15 feet he launched a small rock in its side. The driver did not hear it or if he did he thought best to continue on. After a few minutes another car passed and the man took a large softball sized stone and at 5 feet threw it into the door with a loud thud that everyone heard. I couldn't beleive my eyes. The car proceeded forward and then stopped at the intersection. You could see people pointing fingers and talking.

10 minutes later, after playing some cards with Nadia I went to look outside. What I saw to my horror was 10 men, several security guards with clubs and others with sticks beating the man sensless, knocking him out. Ok, so he was dangerous and some kind of action needed to be taken to keep him from hurting someone else but they continued to beat him after he was unconscious and some looked like they were just in it for the fun. Why?

They tied his hands and feet and soon the police were there. They loaded him up on the back of the pickup truck but instead of just putting him in the back, they shoved him underneath the bars of the seats in his own prison. That is barely enough room for a person. A man who probably did not know what he was doing.

I don't know what happened in this man's life to bring him to where he is but regardless this all left me questioning what was really necessary in all the violence towards him. Sometimes I see things here that make me think that at the root of most people is a need to be violent and beat up someone who is weaker. I don't want to believe this but somedays it seems that way.