Is it OK to risk my life if I have young kids?

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rtgreutm

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I love reading about Saints, but am having trouble finding a Saint who was a man with young children who died risking his/her life while confronting an aggressor. To be more specific, since I am a married man with 4 children 8 and under, what should I do if I spotted an aggressor attacking another person and my life may be at risk if I interceded? Would the prudent thing to do be to stay hidden and call the police or fetch a group of men? Would it be wrong for me to step in and possibly get killed trying to help?
 
rtgreutm said:
what should I do if I spotted an aggressor attacking another person and my life may be at risk if I interceded? Would the prudent thing to do be to stay hidden and call the police or fetch a group of men? Would it be wrong for me to step in and possibly get killed trying to help?
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If you get killed it wouldn’t be very helpful. As a former police officer my advice is: call for help and make a lot of noise around the incident if possible from safety. That is: if in a car, lock doors, drive up, honk horn,shout through crack in window police are on the way.

It’s better to make a scene that become part of one. Witnesses and light are a great deterrent.

BTW - on the cops the rules were:

1st you go home.
2nd your partner goes home.
3rd the witnesses, victims, bystanders go home.
4th, if possible, the bad guy goes… someplace not the morgue.

Of course, we ignored rule 1 a lot when rookies, but knowing when to call for help and not try to be a hero is a large part of learning the job and doing it well.

Be a father 1st. Make sure you go home.
 
Julia_Mae said:
If you get killed it wouldn’t be very helpful. As a former police officer my advice is: call for help and make a lot of noise around the incident if possible from safety. That is: if in a car, lock doors, drive up, honk horn,shout through crack in window police are on the way.
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This is also when that red alarm button on the key fob for modern cars will come in handy!

ICXC NIKA
 
Julia_Mae said:
If you get killed it wouldn’t be very helpful. As a former police officer my advice is: call for help and make a lot of noise around the incident if possible from safety. That is: if in a car, lock doors, drive up, honk horn,shout through crack in window police are on the way.

It’s better to make a scene that become part of one. Witnesses and light are a great deterrent.
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This is exactly how I once handled a situation where a man was running from an aggressor late at night across a long bridge. Had a car full of friends of mine, sped about a 200 feet past the situation (and off the bridge), and smashed the horn whenever the aggressor approached the victim, who was taking shelter behind a guardrail. Kept an eye on the situation while telling another occupant to call the police; after a few minutes the sirens sounded and “Murder Eyes” hopped into a van an sped away.

OP, situations where you might intervene are real; be prepared. Your first priority is yourself and loved ones. In Boy Scouts, when we were taught about emergency preparedness, the first step is to ALWAYS assess the situation for potential dangers BEFORE acting. Then it call for help (police, fire, ambulance) if appropriate. Only THEN render aid if safe to do so.
  • Don’t intervene if the danger to yourself is too great.
  • Always have back-up coming before addressing a situation you can’t fully handle!
 
rtgreutm said:
I love reading about Saints, but am having trouble finding a Saint who was a man with young children who died risking his/her life while confronting an aggressor. To be more specific, since I am a married man with 4 children 8 and under, what should I do if I spotted an aggressor attacking another person and my life may be at risk if I interceded? Would the prudent thing to do be to stay hidden and call the police or fetch a group of men? Would it be wrong for me to step in and possibly get killed trying to help?
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A police officer given the choice between calling for back-up and rushing in and getting killed himself would call for back-up unless that wasn’t a viable alternative. Even then, he’d not rush in unless he had a positive chance of achieving a good outcome. The saints are not suicidal. You try to do what is prudently available to you to do when the situation presents itself.

We want our police officers going home alive, and we want you going home alive, too. We are not willing to say that men with children cannot ethically work as police officers or soldiers, though, not unless their local force does not give them the training and other safeguards that prudence requires. Hope that helps.
 
When you risk your life is a judgement call. For me it really comes down to being able to look myself in the mirror when I’m 80. Can I live with myself for not jumping in? Can I live with myself if it does have a lot of legal fallout- incarceration, bankruptcy?

In any situation, how realistic that you’ll be successful? Obviously, not wise to risk your life without a pretty significant chance of success, getting killed along with someone doesn’t help anyone. And you never know how far the other person is willing to take it, how skilled they are, whether they have friends in the area. So, like life insurance, fire extinguishers, car insurance, safety gear like motorcycle helmets, smoke detectors there are some steps to improve your odds for these low probability situations.

If you live in a jurisdiction that will issue you a Concealed Carry Weapon permit (i.e. a shall-issue state like Texas, Florida, Virgina etc). than pick a firearm, get training, get a permit.

If you’re in a jurisdiction that prefers their citizens to be unarmed victims (most parts of California, IIlinois, New York City, D.C. etc) than determine if there’s anything you can carry legally. I wouldn’t go jumping in and intervening with mace, pepper spray, or a knife but they can be handy in certain circumstances if you are confronted/attacked and can’t run.

Learn the laws in your jurisdiction, sometimes jumping in to assist someone can land you in a lot of legal trouble yourself. Warning shots are in and of themselves a felony in some places. Pulling a gun on someone, even if you think you’re stopping an attack or using it as a warning can get you a brandishing charge. Same with a knife. If you happen to taze or spray some assailant and they die of a heart attack or allergic reaction- involuntary manslaughter. Simply punching or grabbing someone and they fall down and hit their head and die without you actually being in a situation where potentially lethal force is legal can get you an involuntary manslaughter charge as well. And realize, manslaughter carries with it the same financial liability as killing someone in a car accident. They died, you didn’t intend for it to happen, you’re liable. It gets confusing very fast in court as to who was the aggressor at various points in time, roles may have changed, some jurisdictions don’t consider rape to be great bodily harm justifying lethal force etc. How much force is legal to use in assisting someone etc. It varies widely.

Calling the police is a good thing, but mostly they only arrive in time to clean up the mess. That’s the view of most of the officers I know. Frustrating for them, but it’s the reality. The current training for a policeman in an active shooter situation (think Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech is to rush in even prior to backup arriving. That’s because in those situations the shooter is killing 1 person every couple of minutes and normally kill themselves when police confront them.) Other than that, they wait for backup to give themselves the advantage of greater numbers, firepower, and options.
 
styrgwillidar said:
The current training for a policeman in an active shooter situation (think Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech is to rush in even prior to backup arriving. .
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They didn’t rush in at Columbine. They stood around outside for hours with their thumbs… anyway, they stayed out while people inside died of their wounds. If DPD had been first responders, we would have gone in. Some moron from the sheriff’s dept took over the scene. It’s a nightmare a lot of us still live with.
 
Julia_Mae said:
They didn’t rush in at Columbine. They stood around outside for hours with their thumbs… anyway, they stayed out while people inside died of their wounds. If DPD had been first responders, we would have gone in. Some moron from the sheriff’s dept took over the scene. It’s a nightmare a lot of us still live with.
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Columbine was a prime driver behind the change in tactics, that and other incidents like the Virginia Tech shooting. The standard response of most law enforcement agencies at the time was to do exactly what they did, call for the SWAT team. By the time SWAT arrived and assembled, made their entry plan, and went in a lot of people were killed.

Since then the response, for most departments has changed to first arriving officer calls for backup and goes in without waiting. I could never be a policeman, I respect them and have relatives who do that job. Not just the risk, the showing up after motivated to help but being there too late…
 
Thank you all for the great responses to my question. This is along the lines of what I was thinking, but it’s good to get reassurance from others. This question was spurred by a conversation with a co-worker who seems to think the best thing to do is jump right in and help. He is a former boxer and his kids are all in their 30s so he’s coming from a different perspective. I mostly travel on foot or bike, so I often won’t have the opportunity to speak through a cracked window if I witness something, but I suppose I can keep running or biking and call for help ASAP from a bit away from the danger. I do think we need to use our best judgment and determine the likelihood of being able to help before police would get there, evaluating the likelihood that I would get badly hurt or killed, etc. and then use that analysis to make a decision.

I’ve been Catholic for over 13 years now and my realization is that there are many things in the faith that are very black and white whereas other things such as the scenario of encountering an aggressor are more gray and hopefully through prayer and trying to develop and maintain a well-formed conscious, we’ll know the right thing to do when getting into a situation like this. I respect all the police, firefighters, etc. who put their lives in danger to protect others. Thanks!
 
This is an interesting discussion… I am curious as to what the tipping point in you analysis would be? Is it based solely on personal survivability or is it weighed with victim survivability. At what point would you consider it worth the risk to intervene or go into a burning house? Is the risk of personal injury or death automatically rule out any action – or is there some probability involved? Genuinely curious…
 
mtbender said:
This is an interesting discussion… I am curious as to what the tipping point in you analysis would be? Is it based solely on personal survivability or is it weighed with victim survivability. At what point would you consider it worth the risk to intervene or go into a burning house? Is the risk of personal injury or death automatically rule out any action – or is there some probability involved? Genuinely curious…
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It depends on your training and ability to handle a situation, the apparent cause of the situation, and the circumstances of the victim. If it is a small child being attacked many of us would intervene even if it meant being attack ourselves instead. If it were a drug dealer attacking his “client”, then the situation is probably way beyond our direct ability to intervene, and indirect noise making and distraction would probably be safest. If a situation would be impossible to survive (such as a 1000 degree fire trapping people from all sides), then there would be no intervention possible save attempting to extinguish the fire from a distance.

There is no one “tipping point”; it is totally situation dependent.
 
if you see two outside parties hashing it out, don’t get involved beyond calling police. You don’t know the back story and if it differes at all from what you think you see. you will be held accountable in the court of law.
If you can make an egress, do so. If in the course of trying to make distance, they become your problem directly, by all means get as nasty as you need to be. You didn’t choose violence, the aggressor did.
 
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