OPINION

Hard to watch

Most videos of vicious criminal attacks like the ones released this week from New Orleans and Georgia carry a warning: "Contains graphic content" or "Viewer discretion advised" or "May be disturbing to some viewers" or similar. Inevitably, what frequently appears next on the screen should be extremely disturbing to all viewers.

Ironically, these types of videos are typically captured by security cameras, often without audio, and usually with a "wide angle" lens that minimizes detail. Thus they're nowhere near as graphic as the simulated violence projected on massive movie screens, which features gruesome closeups of blood and gore and amped-up sounds for blows and gunshots.

But even the most empathetic moviegoers understand, deep beneath their artificially induced fears and horror, that these are all actors. They are people pretending to be bad guys. As soon as the camera stops filming, they all laugh and joke together.

There's no real violence, no real blood, no real harm. Movie pseudo-violence is, in essence, a conjoined twin of fake news.

In contrast, watching security-cam footage of an attack invokes a series of shattering realizations: These really are bad guys. Those really are innocent victims. They really did get hurt. This actually happened. I've been in similar places and situations--it could happen to me!

In case you missed the revelatory and very disturbing videos that have gone viral in recent days, here's a recap.

The first video shows a Bostonian pair strolling along in the French Quarter last Saturday night (in New Orleans for a religious conference, as it turns out), when suddenly a group of young men is seen running up from behind them.

One of the ambushing attackers leaps onto the back of the tourist on the left and drags him down in a choke hold, as another pummels him.

The other tourist turns, startled, to see what's happening to his friend.

Ominously, the largest of the attackers is right behind him--unseen--with his arm back and ready to strike.

His full-force right hook blindsides and cold-cocks the tourist, who tumbles face-first onto the sidewalk, where a pool of blood forms beneath his motionless head.

In 15 short seconds, it's all over. The victims are robbed and left to deal with the aftermath of their injuries.

The tourist knocked unconscious is still in critical condition.

Just hours earlier, a few blocks away, another video surveillance camera captured a lone man walking on a sidewalk--as another man trails him.

Suddenly the trailing man begins to trot, and as he gets within striking distance he unleashes a vicious roundhouse blow from behind to the right side of the victim's head. When the slugged man staggers back to his feet, the attacker resumes swinging.

Ultimately the victim is able to flee across the street and out of camera range.

Over in Baxley, Ga., an assault on a female food-stand owner was video-recorded last Thursday. Two customers, a man and wife, evidently complained about their chicken being cold.

The owner apologized and refunded their money.

That wasn't enough for the pair, who began hurling obscenities at the woman. When the owner came outside to tell them she had called the police, the female suspect went berserk in a flailing attack that broke the owner's nose and backed her up against the wall.

What unfolds next on the video is chilling and indeed hard to watch.

The owner's 15-year-old daughter gets out of their truck to help her mom. On the video she can be seen focusing on the female attacker. She is not watching, and does not see, the very large male attacker outside her frame of vision.

In a split second, he steps forward and drives a blindside straight-right punch into the petite teen's face.

Her head is savagely snapped back and she is knocked off her feet. She tries to stand up but is visibly dazed as passers-by arrive to help.

"Who does that?" her mother said later in an interview. "Who punches a child like she's a grown man standing there?"

The Baxley police chief said, in his 41 years on the force, "I have never seen anything like this." If you watch the video, you'll likely echo his sentiment.

Assaults are the most common of all violent crimes. Nationally, the rate of aggravated assault is nearly 50 times that of murder.

Louisiana has been a top-10 state for assaults for decades, and it also holds the dubious distinction of having the highest murder rate in the land--for the past 27 years.

But cowardly criminals ambushing vulnerable victims pay little attention to state borders. With video cameras becoming ubiquitous, we're all able to witness more criminal brutality at its ugliest.

Most of us cannot imagine blindsiding a stranger to steal his or her wallet, or slugging a child in the face when she's not looking.

We must commit to more deeply study the factors that cause anybody in an advanced civilized republic to behave that way as a normal course.

It's not only a shame that our society discounts concussions and broken jaws as "minor" injuries when dealing with violent criminals. It's a national disgrace.

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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial on 06/30/2017

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