So after an incredibly dull and unrewarding day at work today, I was walking from the office to the bus downtown tonight. I see two people coming running around the corner on the cross street at the end of the block I’m on. One runs across the street, the other down the block towards me. The cross street they came from is a pretty main bus route, so it makes sense for someone to be running for a bus along that street, but the street I’m on has almost no buses, and even if it did, the person running towards me wouldn’t have been able to see one to run towards it.
It strikes me as odd that two people would both round that corner, running hard, at almost the same moment, but go different directions, and at least one of them not running for a bus. What makes people in the city run (who in what are quite obviously not running clothes) other than running for a bus? Well, being chased is about it. This whole thought process takes about 2 seconds. Sure enough, a cop and a gentleman (whom I can only assume is a witness/victim) come running around the corner after them, and follow the one on my side of the street. The cop and the gentleman are both running, but the person running towards me (I can see now it’s a woman, maybe mid to late 20′s) looks a little faster than them from my roughly one second of observing their relative paces and evaluating overall pace differentials and agility.
So then it occurs to me.
I have a chance to legally open field tackle someone on the street, and as an added bonus, they know a cop is almost there anyway so I can be reasonably confident I won’t get stabbed or shot- I get to be a good Samaritan / Spider-Man preventing the Uncle Ben’s death, and tackle someone in the process. This is already the high point of my day. Awesome.
For a moment I envision a full speed BCS Championship Game style juke move followed by a leaping swinging high arm tackle / clothesline. I drop into the standard linebacker pose – a slight squat, shoulders squared, arms out to about a 45 degree angle, eyes on target. While I’m wearing business casual and a messenger bag. It occurs to me I watch too much football.
If you don’t know me and I haven’t mentioned it elsewhere, it would probably be helpful to mention at this point that I’m male, about 6’3″ and 225lbs, and reasonably athletic. Not something I think of daily, but apparently me in a football stance with an obvious intent to tackle you is rather intimidating. It also doesn’t occur to me daily how much bigger I am than most people so it’s a brief second before I realize what an uneven match up this is.
The girl keeps running and attempts to knock into me and get past. However, given the size differential, it’s a pretty feeble attempt. Plus, she doesn’t really try to go around me, but more through. She runs basically straight in to me, and more or less bounces straight back off. I guess she thought I was going to leap out of the way at the last second or something. She tries again, this time trying to go slightly around me. I wrap one arm around her shoulders, which is more than enough to stop her. At this point it seems to dawn on her how much bigger I am than her as well, and that she’s not getting past. I unwrap my arm and just stand in front of her. She berates me briefly and the cop and the gentleman finally catch up. They are that much slower. At this point it was flagrantly obvious the cop would not have caught up with the lady on his own. She ran into me twice, and told me off, in the amount of distance she got on them in one block.
The cop hands a pair of handcuffs to the gentleman and tells him to arrest the woman. It occurs to me that he probably saw whatever it was illegal that they did, and therefore can/should make a citizen’s arrest. As a side note, if an officer isn’t present for a crime, technically, they shouldn’t arrest the person if it’s a minor offense, and will often ask the main witnesses to make a citizen’s arrest, which the witness can do because they witnessed the crime. (I actually read this article on citizen’s arrests in Minnesota a couple weeks ago, which fit nicely with this evening’s events.)
The cop then set off at a light jog (perhaps a run for him) after the other runner, who had (criminals are dumb) upon splitting up with the woman, chosen to run down the other side of the same street, going the same direction, towards a traffic cop in an intersection. I’m not sure if the cop caught up with the guy, or if the traffic cop got involved. The gentleman was a similar build to me, and seemed to have this whole arresting thing well under control, so I shrugged my shoulders and kept walking to my bus. This all took perhaps 10 or 15 seconds.
I mention this not to brag or anything, but for the following reasons:
- It’s really random and kind of entertaining.
- It’s not often that being a fairly big guy or being in reasonably good shape comes in handy in civil society outside of helping people move, so it’s kind of nice when it does.
- The cop made absolutely, positively no show of appreciation for the help in stopping someone who was apparently worth chasing and arresting, and who would have obviously gotten away otherwise. No “thanks”, not even a half second of eye contact and a slight head nod. He acted exactly as if the girl had run into a light pole and couldn’t figure out how to get around it. I suppose from a legal stand point, the tackling of strangers on the street when you didn’t even witness the crime isn’t something they probably want to encourage, and he was a bit distracted with the other runner, but it still struck me as odd that at no point did he in any way even acknowledge my presence.
- In case you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to tackle someone running from the cops on the street (and you know you have, or that well choreographed fight scene you come up with while waiting in line at the post office where everyone in line who has a package actually has a weapon in it and is well trained in martial arts), even if a bit anti-climactic due to the size differential, yes, it is really fun/exciting.
So, then when I got off the bus tonight after this (again, I mention not to brag, but for the coincidence and how much things go in streaks), I walked about a half block and there was a truck trying to get out of a parking spot on the side of the street, and was really, really stuck on some ice, and spinning their tires trying to get it out. So, laughing a bit, I went over and help push them out. (A guy who I had just passed walking went past this, saw that I went to help, then stopped and came back to help too.) After a couple of good shoves, the truck got some traction and pulled out. In shear contrast to the cop and the amount of effort / personal risk expended in both situations, the girl driving the truck turned around at the next intersection so she could come back and thank us both enthusiastically, and looked absolutely ecstatic that someone, in fact two someones, stopped to help.