Why are people so indifferent?

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So last Saturday I was wandering the city eating all the food I could find. Their I came across a pretty erratic Black guy, he was throwing large cones in front of people as people walked past. He then started asking strangers for cigarettes jumping around and banning anything that made a loud clang. I asked him if he was okay and he gave a semi coherent answer. He sounded like he was on something. After that he started touching women's bellies and peering down on children and touching them. I decided to do something after that. I offered to get him something from the nearest cafe saying I was going to order him something. He agreed. Once their I asked the person at the counter if he could ring the police on this guy telling him all that transpired. He said no and did nothing. After that I tried asking some more people to ring the police. They all said no and one even said, maybe those girls liked being touched. Which was pretty disgusting. The guy ran away pretty quickly after he realized what was going on and told me he was thug. That didn't affect me much but it made me upset afterwards.

Why are people like this?

Strange, if someone was behaving like that where I live, someone's bound to call the police.

yeah well no one here did.

It might depend upon the type of area you're in. Maybe some of those people have a police record, or just don't like the police. Or they're afraid the guy might take revenge on them.

Please don't accuse people of "indifference" if you don't know their story.

Indifference is the wrong word I admit, it implies just doesn't care when an element of fear likely led to them not being involved. I don't think their was much risk however with that person taking revenge, the café is often full of people that could take action and the police would likely deal with a person like him.

So last Saturday I was wandering the city eating all the food I could find. Their I came across a pretty erratic Black guy, he was throwing large cones in front of people as people walked past. He then started asking strangers for cigarettes jumping around and banning anything that made a loud clang. I asked him if he was okay and he gave a semi coherent answer. He sounded like he was on something. After that he started touching women's bellies and peering down on children and touching them. I decided to do something after that. I offered to get him something from the nearest cafe saying I was going to order him something. He agreed. Once their I asked the person at the counter if he could ring the police on this guy telling him all that transpired. He said no and did nothing. After that I tried asking some more people to ring the police. They all said no and one even said, maybe those girls liked being touched. Which was pretty disgusting. The guy ran away pretty quickly after he realized what was going on and told me he was thug. That didn't affect me much but it made me upset afterwards.

Why are people like this?
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10 years ago, 500 miles away, i went to job testing for 911 Operator. the proctor said that, in that city, in that year. there were 4 correct reasons to call 911. and anything else is a prank call, subject to a then 500 dollar fine.

so maybe if you were to have called 911, the operator would've told you you made a prank call.

law enforcement professionals are human. humans have prejudices and make mistakes. a couple years ago, a video showed the California Highway Patrol physically assaulting a woman. the woman won $$ in a civil lawsuit.

911 might not have arrived. if 911 did arrived, it might not have done anything. or it might have done something that was against the law or against protocol.

On the whole, 911 is excellent in NYC. No one will be arrested for crank calling unless it's a blatant prank.

I don't know. People generally ignore crazy people here until they can't be ignored anymore....I think because in most instances, the person isn't actually hurting anyone, and won't hurt anyone as long as they are left alone, and there is a fear that the police will end up shooting and killing the mentally ill person when it really wasn't necessary.

In NYC though, you also have Bellevue which has a large psychiatric ward that will hold mentally ill individuals for extended periods. While there are psychiatric hospitals where I am, they are private and/or selective and do not provide long term care to indigent individuals. A mentally ill individual who is acting erratically might be taken to a local ER and held in a psychiatric ward for 72 hours, but after that, they are released back out on the streets or taken to jail. The tendency here is to hold the mentally ill in jails and prisons where they are handled by prison guards instead of psychiatric nurses. People with schizophrenia in particular are at a high risk of dying in police custody, not just because of rough handling coupled with the fear they experience due to the environment and their hallucinations/delusions, but because some of those anti-psychotics can cause cardiac issues or body temperature regulation problems.

Just the other day there was a mentally ill man in the street obstructing traffic and hassling people. He even chased a woman who had been jogging for a block. But people worked around him and then he went on his way.

Personally I think we should reopen the state psychiatric hospitals. Schizophrenia is a neurological disorder and it's sufferers should not be left to languish on the streets. While state psychiatric hospitals have a bad reputation, a lot of it is fiction. There was a large one in my area that closed down about 15 years ago, and the paper ran a series of articles with interviews from former patients, and most of them described their stay there in a favorable, or neutral light. Few people were actually in locked wards and most people were allowed to freely wander the hospital grounds or even leave if they were unhappy there. I think it was a significantly better place than the side of the road or a prison psychiatric unit.

During the Reagan years they closed those hospitals. It was appealing to the right because they cut government expenditures. It was appealing to the left because people weren't locked up against their will.

Yes, and what a humanitarian crisis it has created.

The actual catalyst for the closure of the hospitals was a series of civil rights cases. While I agree that a person should have say over their care, the shift in the system has gone to far too the opposite extreme, and people who are too ill to care for themselves have been left to fend for themselves when they cannot. Many of these people, if hospitalized and medicated, will become lucid enough to continue their care on their own, but the current system does not even give them that opportunity. I've encountered a number of people with schizophrenia who are well enough to hold lucid conversations, but who are still too disoriented and navigate the system to get proper care if they wanted it. The social services system is difficult to navigate even for someone who does not have a thought disorder.