Slashdot Mirror
Real Life Super Hero Arrested
First time accepted submitter Pat Attack writes "In an ironic twist of fate, Phoenix Jones, a self-styled super hero from Seattle, has landed in jail. Jones happened upon a group of people fighting in the street and tried to stop the fight using pepper spray. He was arrested by police on four counts of assault. The New York Daily News quotes Jones: 'I've been shot once and I don't really want it to happen again. I've been stabbed twice, hit with a baseball bat and had my nose broken,' he says. 'But in all those incidents I helped someone who was in danger. If someone is going to take that punishment it should be the guy in body armor,' he said."
I would say we need these guys a lot more than we need thugs assaulting each other or random people in the streets.
If I got jumped by a bunch of guys, I would rather have someone in body armor show up with mace than no-one at all.
Yeah, one of the most poignant lines in Kick Ass is where he's valiantly trying to fight off a bunch of guys kicking the shit out of someone (and him too). One of the assailants says "The fuck is wrong with you, man? You'd rather die for some piece of shit that you don't even fucking know?" and he replies "The three assholes, laying into one guy while everybody else watches? And you wanna know what's wrong with me?"
Superheroes my ass. These people are not superheroes. Superheroes are people with special powers they use for good.
These guys are better then superheroes. They are real life heroes. They do good things, just to help people, and not because they have special powers, they do it without special powers! Calling them superheroes like they are from a comic book with special powers doesn't do them right.
Reading the news lately feels more and more like reading the Onion
*nerd hat off*
If you're posting on Slashdot, I'm pretty sure that hat doesn't come off ;)
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I know, sounds as cheesy as it can get.
Still - I, for one, already got into a fight with bad people. 6v1 with knifes kind of bad people, who just wanted my belongings and more likely, just something to hit, because I'd gladly leave my belongings and keep on living like anybody else.
As it was inside a moving train, I "resisted" for a few minutes, and people just went away (mind you, no one called for help, police, guards, etc), leaving me with my problems. It became bad when they took out the knifes.
Well, lucky day, that's when a super hero came in and kicked them out. An ex military, and the kind you just see in movies. It was easily won 2v6 (and I'm no fighter).
I'm glad he was there. Next time he'll call 911 instead and watch me die, right? Thanks for the tip police it sounds like the right thing to do!
I'm telling you, in any situation like that where you know you're actually able to help (obviously this guy was) - fucking do it. If you're not, then do call 911.
This isn't vigilantism. "any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime. "
This is not avenging (judge, jury), this isn't even crime prevention. This is people stopping actual crimes in progress. If you try to break up a fight, is that vigilantism? If you stop a robbery is that vigilantism? If you stop a little girl from being kidnapped?
People like you who confuse stopping a crime in action with vigilantism are just stupid idiots who need to be shouted down and humiliated for being idiots.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yeah, but the problem is with vigilantes is that there's no guarantee they'll agree with you what an "asshole" is in less clear-cut cases. Sure, if a vigilante rescues me from being beaten up, I'd be grateful. But what if he "rescues" me from buying liquor, or porn, or having an abortion? The fantasy of being a vigilante isn't limited to doing good, it includes getting to decide what *is* good to do. And without somebody looking over your shoulder, it's easy to screw that up.
Take this case. If you watch the video (http://vimeo.com/30307440), you see a bunch of people -- probably drunk -- standing around while a couple of guys are doing the bear-hugging drunk fight thing. Then Mr. Jones wades in with his Jumbo-sized can of pepper spray. Who's to say he didn't do more harm than these guys were going to do to each other?
When we imagine ourselves as superheroes, we imagine ourselves with superhuman traits to go with it. Even if that doesn't include obvious superpowers, it includes non-obvious ones: superhuman judgment (always being right) and superhuman luck (always winning in the end). The reality is that people are fallible. Of course the cops are fallible too, but they have one big advantage: numbers. Even if they don't arrive in force, even a single cop has the promise of dozens of others at his call. The best way to end a fight like this is overwhelming force, which Mr. Jones does not possess. He has to bring a weapon into the fight, thus *escalating* the conflict.
Everything you don't like about cops can be true of vigilantes, except they don't regard themselves as accountable to anyone else even in *principle*.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.