On the night of Thursday June 8, a woman jumped from the eighth floor of a hotel Located in one of the busiest areas of Mexico City. Before the astonished gaze of dozens of people gathered outside the Holiday Inn Express reform 222, Araceli threatened for several minutes that she would throw herself from her bedroom window. In the end she did and suicide has generated outrage among users of social networkswho accuse the CDMX authorities, the hotel staff and the spectators themselves for not acting on time.
Araceli, a 41-year-old woman from Veracruz, checked into a hotel near the Reforma 222 shopping plaza on Thursday afternoon. According to the first reports, witnesses indicated that Araceli it took him more than 30 minutes to break the glass in his room and then another 20 minutes to throw himself. During that time, dozens of people recorded with their mobileincluding the staff at the Holiday Inn Express.
Carmen González, a witness who was at the scene, accused police officers and hotel employees of not helping Araceli. “The girl spent a maximum of 30 minutes, a little more, a little less trying to break the glass and the people from the hotel just came out to film and were laughing,” she said. “And after a while the first patrol arrived and even went down, laughing as if it were any situation. The truth is a little sad to see that there is such indifference,” she accused.
After throwing herself, Araceli died from the impact. Several videos of the suicide in different angles have been shared on Twitter, opening a discussion among users. Why did people worry more about recording the event than helping the woman?
Why do people take out their mobile and do not act?
The explanation for what happened in the suicide of Araceli in Reforma 222 would be related to the bystander effect. This theory states that individuals are less likely to help a victim in the presence of a group of people. The term was coined after the murder of Kitty Genovese, a fact that according to New York Timeswas witnessed by 37 witnesses who did not call the police despite hearing the cries for help.
John Darley and Bibb Latané, two social psychologists who tried to understand the fact, carried out a series of further experiments. In them they discovered that the presence of more people in an emergency situation inhibits any of them from acting. The bystander effect is made up of four elements: self-awareness, social cues, blocking mechanisms, and diffusion of responsibility.
The latter is key in the bystander effect, since in emergency situations, the individual assumes that others must act or have already done so. Passers-by who witness the event do not feel responsible for asking for help, a phenomenon that is accentuated if the number of people is greater. There are other factors that inhibit participation, such as a latent risk or the type of action required.
In the case of Reforma 222, the people who recorded Araceli with their cell phones believed that someone else would intervene, or that their participation was not necessary. The arrival of a patrol car or an ambulance would cause people to assume that the authorities were the best. According to Darley and Latané, in situations of this type, people do not act either because they are afraid of getting into trouble.
Reform 222: who is responsible?
The protocol of the CDMX Citizen Security Secretariat establishes that in a suicide attempt, the priority is to preserve life. The first step is to notify the emergency services, so a person should call 911. As an ambulance arrives, an officer from the Secretary of Citizen Security must approach the victim to try to persuade her
The police officer should engage in a dialogue with the person and allow them to express their problem. Contrary to what happened in Reforma 222, authorities should not record with their cell phones. The official cannot minimize the crisis situation and you have to inform the affected person that there are psychological and health services that you can access free of charge.
At the moment, the discussion has focused on apportioning blame. Some point to users sharing the suicide video for not acting. Others focus on hotel staff or emergency services. The truth is It took Araceli more than 30 minutes to break the glass in her room and another 20 more to jumpr.
Reforma 222 is located in a tourist area and the elements of the Secretariat of Citizen Security should have come on time. Indifference in critical situations has claimed the lives of other people. The most recent case is the fire at the station of the National Institute of Migration in Ciudad Juárezwhere 39 migrants died and another 27 suffered serious injuries.