CNN AC360 discusses another "Bystander Effect" case in Richmond CA

Tonight, Tuesday Oct. 27, John King hosted AC360, and presented the horrific case of a criminal assault in a high school in Richmond California during homecoming. As in the Kitty Genovese case in New York in 1964 (discussed on ABC 20/20 recently, on this blog Oct. 24), there were many potential onlookers who did nothing, expecting others to act. Apparently teachers, police and school administrators remained blind, despite that this happened on school ground – reporters say that there was no security outside on school grounds. The victim left early and was not missed. Subsequent reports on CNN claim that at least ten bystanders witnessed the attacks and did nothing. Some comments to CNN consider the bystanders "just as guilty" as the perpetrators; I remember a less like this in grade school.

The commentators indicated that this was a scene of unparalleled depravity. Some of today’s youth are simply not connecting to any sense of morality. “Our children have lost their way.” They talked about the Bystander Effect. There was also a question as to whether media violence, as on TV, movies or the Internet, provokes this kind of violence and rationalizations for it.

CNN’s American Morning tape transcript with Miles O’Brien is here.

I stayed in a motel in Richmond CA at the start of a trip in February 2002.

Sanjay Gupta talked about H1N1, and the warning signs that a child is developing secondary pneumonia and life threatening complications, which can become an instantaneous emergency. He talked about the range of parental reactions, from hysteria on the one hand to sponsoring “swine flu parties” like chickenpox parties on the other.

Gupta also discussed the sweat lodge deaths in Arizona, and said that the high humidity, preventing sweating, could have contributed, as well as the 36-hour fast before the sauna.

CBS has this story about "self-help guru James Ray" here. On ABC Good Morning America, a couple of people told about paying $6000 to him to be dumped in San Diego to experienc being a homeless person. One person thought it was ridiculous, the other thought that the experience taught him he could make something of nothing.