Gurugram shooting: Eyewitnesses' failure to intervene not public apathy, but self preservation, reveal the police-public divide

One can moan and groan about public apathy when fifty people hang about a hit and run incident doing nothing while the victim is bleeding to death. One can whine as much when a woman is being beaten by a couple of hoods and three dozen people become spectators to the scene when they could collectively do something to stop it. But it is pretty much unfair to use the same yardstick and blame the forty odd ‘wimps’ who videotaped a guard shooting a judge’s wife and son in the Gurugram market in Delhi on Saturday, killing the wife. There are many reasons for this lack of response and all of them legitimate. If one is suddenly caught unaware in a situation where they watch a man in uniform firing his weapon and hauling a man into a car, as the video shows, their first instinct would be to duck. Run for cover because self preservation is uppermost. This reaction is hastened by a split second conclusion that the policeman is in an official encounter and you don’t want to get mixed up in this. Would anyone? [caption id=“attachment_5375891” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Security guard who shot a judge in Gurugram tries to move the body while eyewitnesses watch. ANI[/caption] Secondly, all this action occurs in a few seconds and there is scarcely time for the public to work out some sort of Bruce Willis plan. This is not a movie, this is real life, real bullets from a .38 which would blow your face apart. Who would want to mess with that? The media goes on and on about the cowardice and craven mindset of the people. Almost every news report in the papers and on the television mentions with suitable dismay the cruel indifference of the public. Like to see how many media representatives would have been able to do anything dramatic. Saving ourselves is natural. That is why 300 people on a hijacked plane morph into the Stockholm syndrome and buddy up with the hijackers. Why a crowd in a bank cower in a corner because a couple of robbers brandish a weapon. It’s suffice to say that those who had the presence of mind to shoot the video actually took a risk and in the aftermath of the killing of the judge’s wife it is this video that will provide concrete evidence of what occurred as against the notoriously unreliable accounts given by eyewitnesses. Then again, the police are not our friends. Unfortunately, it is an inimical relationship between the common man and the cop. He is not a buddy. He is not the ‘go to’ person in a crisis and he is certainly not someone you want to have anything to do with. In fact, one of the great regrets of the past 70 years of our democracy is that we see the police as the ’enemy’ not the social pillar of support it should be. We look the other way. We would rather not go to them, get involved in the paperwork, and find ourselves on the wrong end of the stick for doing the right thing. It’s sad but true. The Centre and the state governments need to address this huge gap in trust and affection and the total failure of every administration. They must find a bridge as the price is what we label public apathy. Ergo, I don’t want to get involved with the cops, keep me out of it. Unless the attitude of mutual contempt changes we will continue to stay away even in situations where we can and would like to help. So, don’t blame the public. Those forty witnesses were not cowards. They were just folks being human.