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Other people come across this scene, employees on a smoke break from a nearby business. To them, this looks really really bad. They decide they need to intervene in the arrest, protect the woman, and they start to rally other people to help out in this plan.

Stop. Someone else, who knows more to this story, suggests that they stop and think a moment. He tells them that he knows more about the history leading up to this moment.

The small older seemingly frail woman is often a danger to herself and others. In the past she has repeatedly put herself in dangerous situations. She has also on occasion punched her foot or hand through glass windows.

She does better on particular meds. When she doesn't take them, she doesn't do well, and she is public about not doing well. She has gotten hurt, others have been harmed.

Tonight she very likely does need to be detained. Tonight most likely the very safest place she can be is right here, being detained.

The process of detaining her won't look good. She is resisting.

Will she get the right care, the right meds? Will everyone in the process she will undergo tonight be at their best? Will the system work for her, is the system broken, what part is her responsibility? Couldn't this happen differently?

Back to that decision moment, when the group of well meaning citizens believed they needed to intervene. They did not know the whole story. They made a judgement call on what they saw before them. Sometimes that is all we can do. Yet we also need to remember we may not know the whole story.

So it was decided that it was best to watch from a distance and not interfere. They served as witnesses. A little more information changed what they saw as an obvious injustice to a possible best case scenario in our current real world situation.