One warm summer evening my sister and I decided it would be nice to take a short bike ride along the local greenway trail. The trail, which was constructed a couple of years ago, replaced some obsolete railroad tracks and a large portion runs along the backyards of houses. After riding just a of couple miles we turned to head back home. As we were riding along immersed in frivolous conversation our attention was corralled by a ruckus just to our right. We turned to find a man crouching in the corner of his backyard swinging his arms wildly and yelling inbetween deep, panting breaths. At first I thought he was engaged in some sort of brawl with a dog. But my mind quickly turned to more atrocious anxieties when I realized what he was yelling. "Are you fucking around on me bitch?!" He screamed incessantly between blows. Upon this realization my sister and I pulled over and looked at each other completely confused and horrified. "What the hell is going on?" "Should we call the police?" we asked each other. Not quite sure of what we had just witnessed, my sister turned to ride back over to confirm that the man was hitting a woman and not an animal as we had first guessed. She returned to report that it was in fact a lady, who had freed herself and was now walking away from the man yelling at him. She seemed ok, wasn't asking for help, and as the incident did occur in a private backyard, we were unsure what to do. So, as I tend to do when at a loss, I called my mom. She told us to ride by again, assess the situation and call her back. If it seemed dangerous or like someone was in harms way we should then inform the police. So we rode by again to see the man and woman standing near the chain-link fence hollering at each other. we continued riding as I began dialing my mom when we heard motorcycles behind us, we turned back wondering why motorcycles were on the bike trail and to our relief we saw two cops approaching us. We pulled over and my sister called out to them, "hey we need your help!" They looked at us nodded and continued passed us. Assuming they had misunderstood her plea, we started jumping, yelling, and waving our hands frantically. The officers turned and looked at us, once again nodded and then just kept on driving forward. We were appalled. Not only did they ignore us twice when we explicitly told them that we were in need of their assistance and tried to flag them down, but they themselves drove right by the very disturbance that had worried us so without doing a thing. This man and woman were standing at the fence, in full view, obviously having a heated argument and these so-called agents of peace and protection didn't even hesitate! Aghast, I surveyed the trail looking for a hidden camera crew that would jump out at us revealing that they had set the whole thing up to see how people would react, but there was none to be found. Still unsure of what the hell was going on, my sister and I rode by one more time and it seemed like the situation was cooling down. The couple was still arguing, but no one seemed in any imminent danger, so we just rode home. I felt like an asshole for not doing anything, but I really didn't know what to do, and when I had tried I was completely ignored. Being on the trail I couldn't see street names or addresses, so if I were to call 911 all I could tell them was that there seemed to be a domestic dispute in one of the homes along the trail between 2 streets. Which I guess would probably have been better than nothing, but alas I did nothing.
