Oh, the humanity

I was on my home from a party in Livermore last night, so I got off the freeway at Hacienda and went down Martinelli to get home. Here is a map for reference:



As I was coming up on Arnold, I noticed a dark shape in the dirt on the side of the road; I always take a closer look at stuff like this, which usually ends up being garbage bags or boxes. In this case, it was a person. To be more specific, it was an African-American male, who was lying there with his head on his arm, dressed all in black, and looked like he was sleeping. Since I am not used to seeing human sprawled on the side of the road, I called the Dublin police dispatch. As a side note, yes, I have the Dublin emergency phone number dispatch programmed into my cell phone.

Anyway, so the operator asks me if the man appears injured, and I say, "no, there's no blood or anything." She asks if I want to wait for the police, and I said I would since there were cars driving by. About three minutes after I hung up with the dispatcher, I see a police car on Arnold, and then he flips on his lights and drives the wrong way about 100 feet down the street where I was.

This cop gets out of his cruiser, turns on his flashlight, and starts shining it in the guy's face; as he is doing this, 3 more cops pull up, and a firetruck. I see the man moving, so he's not dead. This is a relief for me, since finding a dead body wasn't ever on my bucket list. I watch the scene unfold from my rearview mirror for a few minutes. The firefighters are doing something, and all the cops are talking. Eventually, one of the officers came over to tell me exactly what was going on.

Apparently, Dublin PD are extremely familiar with the guy who I found; this is the third time this month he has been picked up by them for being "severely intoxicated." The cop thanked me for phoning it in, and told me that this was "normal for [the guy sleeping on the side of the road]." He also told me that the man had just been released from the hospital that morning for the same thing, but they were securing him an ambulance to take him back.

Here's my question: how many people drove by without (1) noticing the suffering of a fellow human-being; or (2) not caring, or thinking it wasn't their problem. Is this what we have come to? Yes, the guy clearly has a problem and needs help, but seriously...