McDonalds transgender beating

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

This video is deeply upsetting. The incident occurred April 18.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCPd4uuVKm0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ5lOvs0Nf4[/youtube]

articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-0 … nty-police

If you watched the second video or read the article then you’ll see that the victim is a transgender woman who was apparently attacked because she used the female restroom. It’s hard to believe how many people were present and simply watched the beating go on. There were six McDonalds employees present. The guy recording and his friends seem to think the whole thing is entertaining. The supervisor yells stop a few feeble times but basically allows the black girls to continue their attacks. Fucking nuts. One older woman, a customer, steps in on the victim’s behalf and staves off the attackers for about a minute, but they eventually get around her. There’s a good chance the two accused girls will be convicted of a hate crime in addition to assault which means the penalties will be harsher. Some people are turning the story into a racial issue and there is a flood of racial comments on YouTube. Others are using the story as a political platform to discuss hate crime laws. Mostly what concerns me is the cruelty of the attackers and the moral bankruptcy of all the bystanders.

If only right and wrong were always this clear.

[tab]I live fucking 30 minutes away from the McDonalds. Baltimore is a scary place sometimes.[/tab]

2

essex.patch.com/articles/communi … eo-5789994

Only the McDonalds employee who recorded the beating was fired. What kind of message does that send? I think the message from the McDonalds franchise owner to the employees is “We don’t care if you stand there and watch shit like that happen, but don’t fucking record it on video and cause trouble for the company.” Otherwise, why haven’t the other employees who just stood there been fired as well?

3

that’s pretty stone-cold evil.

4

goddamnit i really regret watching that. that’s gonna haunt me for a while.

sometimes it’s hard not to be racist. i really have an aversion to black chicks already, and this just reinforces it.

5

Yeah, pretty hard stuff to watch. Although it seems it didn’t have anything to do with the fact they were transgender at all (unless it mentions it in the article which I haven’t read yet?) This shit happens all the time, don’t it?

Nah, because it’s none of their business and they might get hurt. They might end up getting lawsuits and shit. Most jobs I’ve been in in the public eye I’ve been told not to get involved with disputes.

6

so you wouldn’t risk your job to protect a person who’s being brutally beaten on the floor in front of you? i’d sock those fucking bitches in the face.

7

hump be careful…i would feel the same way…but the police have to be very careful in these disputes especially domestic ones…they frequently get killed…when i tried to help an old man that was being beaten i almost was knifed in the process…

8

All depends on the situation. If it’s a shit/temporary job then I’d sock em too. But if it’s a job I desparately needed I may not.

Also, have you ever heard of bystander apathy? The fact that there was so many people there will not have helped her chances.

9

Yeah, it was pretty cruel. I mean we all fly off our hinges every once in awhile, but that was something else.

I would say I’m sorry, but I’m really not.

10

The black girls said the attacks were because she used the women’s restroom. I think it’s in the article and I think Chrissy mentions it in the video “Beating Victim Speaks Out.”

Violence is nothing new in Baltimore, but this was like random, wanton rage.

That was exactly my point. The McDonalds employer is punishing the guy who recorded the beating because his video is causing problems for the company.

And I disagree with you, it is your business if 3 girls are beating the shit out of some woman in your restaurant. Instead of just yelling stop a few times like the supervisor did, he ought to have physically restrained the black girls. That’s what makes sense.

11

What can the employees do outside of calling the cops? Do you have any idea the kind of lawsuit McDonald’s would face if one of the employees stepped in and physically prevented the attack from continuing and injured one of the attackers…particularly the minor?

I agree that it’s pretty callous to be filming the whole thing, although, it’s difficult to say whether or not the assailants would have been caught if it had not been recorded. I don’t know the particulars on how they were caught, though, so that’s just conjecture.

12

Reading the other responses, I think you guys are focusing too much on the employees, in general. I’m pretty sure any of the bystanders could have physically gotten in between the attacker and the attacked, and as long as one of the attackers hit that person first, that person could do just about whatever they wanted to the attacker short of using weapons or hitting one of the attackers if they had already knocked them down.

Had I been a bystander there, and I’m a 6’4" 230lb. male, I’d have covered the individual attacked with my body, and just waited for one of the attackers to hit me, (accidental or not) then gotten up and knocked her out with a single punch, unless it was the minor (and I could tell she was a minor) if it was the minor, I’d have physically tied her up and then when the other attacker hit me to intervene, knock that attacker out and then tie up the minor again.

I can understand why the employees wouldn’t physically intervene, if they need the job. If anything like that happened here, I’m afraid that I make too much money to get physically involved. I think a few of you may recall that beat-down that occurred in the train tunnel in Seattle, the, “Guards,” couldn’t really do anything, per their employer.

EDIT: Of course, my main problem with it is not even so much the 2:1, but mainly hitting a person that is down that intended to stay down. I’m not cool with two people beating Hell out of a person that’s down, and I’d probably intervene if it was one person doing it.

I really hate to say this, because I’m going to get flamed all to Hell, but my post basically assumes that the person appears to be a female. If I knew the person being attacked was a transvesite, Hell, that’s a dude vs. two women in a fight, you have to be able to take care of yourself better than that.

13

One other thing:

I’m going to play a little Devil’s Advocate, here, but one thing I should like to mention is that we have no idea what happened in that bathroom prior to this thing being filmed.

Also, if you’ve read the article, and there are actually three articles, now, the individual who was attacked seems absolutely convinced that it was a, “Hate Crime.” For this to be a hate crime, however, requires not only that the individual attacked be a transvestite, not only that the individuals doing the attacking to think it was a transvestite, but for the individuals attacking to know it was a transvesite and to be attacking the transvestite for that reason.

There are only three ways for the attackers to have known the individual in question was a transvestite.

1.) The sound it made when the transvestite urinated.

2.) The transvestite told them that the transvestite was a transvestite.

3.) The transvesite is pre-op and pulled it out for them, or made some other kind of pass.

By no means whatsoever am I condoning this attack, or necessarily stating that any of the above things happened, but the transvestite seems convinced that the attackers knew about the individual being a transvestite. How would that be?

Additionally, even though I doubt some altercation occurred and the transvestite swung first, I can’t completely rule out that possibility. It seems very unlikely, though, with the 18-year-old African-American having a prior for assault…at that same McDonald’s.

No matter what the case, though, I want to stress that hitting an individual when they are down and clearly not planning on getting up is absolutely inexcusable.

14

Pav,

What else could the employees have done? 1. They definitely should have called the cops sooner. 2. They should have physically held the girls back/stood in their way. I don’t know how they could have gotten in trouble for doing so, especially since there were plenty of witnesses to confirm what happened in the event of a lawsuit.

And if I had to make an exclusive choice between being a decent human being and avoiding legal trouble…yeah…I pity anyone who submits to the law and thinks he’s done his part.

There seems to be agreement among both the victim and her attackers that the incident came about because of her use of the female bathroom. From the article I linked: “They said, ‘That’s a dude, that’s a dude and she’s in the female bathroom,’ said Chrissy Lee Polis, 22, who said she stopped at the Rosedale restaurant to use the restroom.”

What’s your point? Does that make her beating less wrong? No, so I’m gonna go ahead and say that the above is irrelevant.

Yes.

15

That’s pretty lame, Pav.

16

Oh, well in the video she seems to thhink it was because they thought that she was ‘hitting on my man’. Pav’s point about them not being able to know she was a tranny ran through my mind too:

To be honest she doesn’t particularly look much like a guy. She does a lot better job than others do that’s for sure.

I’m no sure about this. Do you mean specifically because it takes place on the grounds of the restaurant? If it doesn’t, it literally comes down to a moral focus. And I would say that it’s none of your business what is going on (IE are you morally obliged to get involved?). It’s a difficult one.

Not that I haven’t got involved in shit like that before, in fact I often do. But in principle I wouldn’t say you are obliged.

Crikey, you’re a big person.

17

Well if you think Chrissy lied about what was said as quoted in the article I linked, then okay yeah.
“They said, ‘That’s a dude, that’s a dude and she’s in the female bathroom,’ said Chrissy Lee Polis, 22, who said she stopped at the Rosedale restaurant to use the restroom.”

You are as obligated to help the woman in this case as you are to help a drowning child that you come upon while walking around a lake.

18

They should have called the cops sooner, I’ll grant you that. However, I don’t think that they can physically intervene because if they injure one of the girls, particularly the minor, McDonald’s is getting sued. It’s crazy, because, Polis is thinking about suing McDonald’s even though Maryland has no law requiring anyone to come to Polis’ aid.

The whole situation really sucks for McDonald’s because there’s a potential for lawsuit no matter what the employees do. It’s really unfair because you take a couple of retards that decide (we assume) to unprovokedly beat all Hell out of a Transvestite, and it just happens to be in McDonald’s, so you have McDonald’s possibly getting sued one way or another.

Complete bullshit. McDonald’s didn’t (physically) do anything to Polis.

I’d be concerned with my job, I can’t really lose my job without having another job in place.

I don’t see how what Polis says necessarily means the attackers said that, but then again, I watched the video on the computer on which I have no speakers. My basic question was, how did they come to find that Polis was a transvestite?

Well, if I saw two females beating on a guy, I’m not going to physically intervene on his behalf.

19

I’ll admit that the transvestite doesn’t look too much like a man, in my opinion. The transvestite looks like an incredibly ugly woman with a masculine brow and jawline, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say the transvestite looks like a man.

Yeah, but my weight is pretty reasonable for my height and build.

20

I wasn’t really concluding that the transvestite lied, of course, I didn’t listen to the video. The main point I was trying to get across is I’d really like to know how the assailants knew the assaulted was a transvestite.