January 6, 2011 | 10:53 AM | By

“Go and do likewise.”

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Crime, Metro, WMATA

I saw this video on YouTube yesterday, but didn’t want to link to it because of the profanity and a few other reasons…I’m grateful TBD has more information that I can point you to, instead. This whole story just makes me want to shake my head. No one helped. Everyone filmed. This city’s social fabric is fraying everywhere and in some spots, it is worn through:

On Sunday night, Allen Haywood was randomly and viciously attacked by two kids on the platform of the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station. Dozens of people witnessed it. Several people filmed it. Nobody helped.

Haywood was trying to transfer to the Yellow Line around 7:15 p.m. when the assault happened. He was headed home to Fort Totten after working out at Results on Capitol Hill, a gym bag slung over his shoulder and a book in his hands. As he read with his back to the station wall, “all of a sudden someone whacked me on the back of the head really hard,” he recalls…

Haywood looked to strangers for help, but all he saw were other kids with their cell phones out, recording the scene and laughing. Judging from his voice-over, the man shooting the YouTube video above doesn’t appear to be part of the group. The video showed up yesterday on Unsuck D.C. Metro, which posted an anonymous account of the attack Tuesday.

“I can understand people not wanting to get physically involved,” says Haywood, who’s 47 and works in a Friendship Heights flower shop. “But nobody pressed the emergency button or went to the booth,” as far as he knows.

One of those kids offered to sell him the video of his own beating. I used to think the scariest thing about Metro was the broken escalators (the extra long ones make me queasy); now I think it’s the terrifying lack of a response to crime, whether from the people paid to work there or the commuters who look the other way.

About the author

DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →

  • DiversityIsGood

    When around blacks, never relax.

  • Oldchicago

    Very pertinent observation, and consistent with my own experiences in the world.

  • Justin

    People don’t care about others as much as they want you to believe. This isn’t just a DC-specific problem. It’s a national issue.

    The reason why self-defense is so important is that, even in situations where there are many people around, one (sadly) can’t expect any assistance from those very same people when being assaulted.

  • Dbrighthaupt

    1. I could never understand Seinfelds’ (the sitcom) reasoning for ending such a great series with the cast going to jail. I deemed those last episodes lame and disappointing. After watching the metro attack vid via someone’s cell, Seinfelds’ finale now gets a thumbs-up. You’ll have to buy/rent it to know why the cast got arrested. But sometimes, there should be penalties to people who choose to video tape a crime, rather than do something (within their safezone) to assist.

    2.@Diversityisgood- Funny, black people…. and smaller soil-rich nations said the same thing about white people not that long ago.

    In fact, the family of the black man Hung and dragged less than a decade ago in Texas still can’t relax around whites.

    And today, I’ll bet today a few blacks can’t quite relax when right wing Extremists, Politicians, and Supreme Court Justices run’amuck with a Majority.

    And here is your diversity: None of us can relax when a white neo conservatives create national crises’, label it terrorism and an enemy, solely to go to war for profit.