I was researching crime, punishment, and residavisim here in Finland, for an articulate rant to post on my newly created Salon.com blog, thinking here's a chance to be literate, witty, and just a bit caustic for a wider audience. Kind of Truman Capote meets Jon Stewart with the factual integrity of Anne Rule. A rant regarding violence and the attitude towards it in the pristine welfare state. A state that earnestly believes in rehabilitation, often to the disgust of its citizens, who like most opposed to the death penalty will make an exception for it's use in especially brutal cases. Not many would shed a tear or light a candle for ?Briekvik? if they gave him a needle to the next plain of existence. Of course he wont be "put down" he'll get "life" about 15 years, more or less in Scandanavia with good behavior.It's likely he will be detained for life in a "secure facility" for the mentally ill until he's dead or too feeble to be a threat.
It was while scrolling through these types of grim stat.'s and articles I opted for a facebook break. Lighten my mood with the banal delights of my many social games, LOL catz, political gaffes, and trite celebrity gossip. When I came across a post from an old school friend. it was a re post from another school friend about another school friend who had passed away late Sunday night. Richard Sprague was dead, murdered, in an especially harsh manner. He was stabbed and robbed on the street in his own San Francisco Mission District neighborhood, the utterly shocking thing is it took many hours for him to die in agony on the street bleeding screaming for help until he ran out of breath. Passers by took no notice as it was late at night they simply assumed he was another poor drunk or drug crazed homeless person, they couldn't be bothered to call 911, even if to annonomuosly just say some drunk is bleeding on the street here send a cop, 30 seconds could have saved his life. You call 911 and you say there's a disturbance, the cops will come eventually.......Well they came 5 hours too late, he lay on the fucking street for 5 hours in agony! In San Francisco. a city which by the way I found to be the rudest I've ever been too and I've lived in L.A., London and New York! I cant believe this isn't a huge headline nationwide or even the S.F. paper this is Kitty Genovese yet again. How self involved do you have to be to walk passed a man bleeding on the ground begging for help, for someone to call an ambulance. I understand not wanting to get involved, with the police etc.. you don't have to, just call 911 at least as you walk away it's not like you don't have a dime for the payphone down the block! Did everyone's battery die? Didn't anyone have enough credit on their prepaids? Isn't 911 a toll free call? Don't the cops cruise around the city on their mountain bikes? WTF is wrong with people! I thought San Francisco is supposed to be a great big compassionate tolerant love in of a city with a strong sense of community and liberal do goodyness.
Makes me wonder if this had happened in Ricks old home town of Seattle, how long would it have taken for someone to call 911? Not 5 fucking hours that's for sure! It wouldn't happen in New York where these days folks are pushy and hurried, as always, but also curious and very very helpfull when prompted by their morality reflex.. Even here in urban Finland where we suffer an extreme plethora of nasty ass drunks when just going out to the supermarket on a cold Tuesday afternoon, this wouldn't happen, I see it at least every other week (almost daily in summer) when some alcoholic has fallen down and hit their head, someone always calls the cops, because, jaded and cynnical as we are we still have our humanity! But Rick wasn't some old drunk stumbling around he was the victim of a crime, a kind man, a decent man, he loved his partner, his family, his friends and pets, He was gemologist and traveled the world, He was planning a trip to Finland at some point in the future and we could have caught up in person, and no doubt been impressed by how we've maintained our good looks over the years, those of you who knew him will remember his sense humor.
Updated the SF chron. says he wasn't stabbed or shot......more later
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