Four teenagers were arraigned in Richmond, Calif., Thursday. Three of the suspects are juveniles, and one is a 19-year-old man. All have been charged as adults. A 21-year-old man has also been arrested but not officially charged in the rape.

The assault has shocked Bay Area residents not only because as many as two dozen people apparently witnessed it but because the attack went on for more than two hours without anyone reporting or stopping it.

A former Richmond High School student, who heard about the rape secondhand, eventually alerted Richmond Police, who expect to make more arrests in the case.

Some experts have attributed the witness inaction to the so-called bystander effect, which posits that witnesses are less likely to intervene if other bystanders aren't stepping in to stop the crime.

Drew Carberry of the National Council on Crime Prevention told CNN: "If you are in a crowd and you look and see that everyone is doing nothing, then doing nothing becomes the norm."

Early reports indicate that some bystanders recorded the rape on cellphones and others cheered. If that's correct, those individuals could be charged as accomplices under California law even if they didn't physically assault the victim.

Accomplice liability is applicable to someone who aides and abets a crime, says Kara Dansky, executive director at the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. If a bystander verbally encouraged a crime, they can face the same level of punishment as those who actually carry it out, she says.

For his part, Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagen told CNN that police "do not have the ability to arrest people who witnessed the crime and did nothing.... The law can be very rigid. We don't have the authority to make an arrest."

But Professor Dansky suspects the question of accomplice liability will become a key issue in the prosecution's case.

Answering the question of what amounts to aiding and abetting, however, will require "intensive fact investigation on the part of the police and difficult line-drawing on the part of the prosecutors," she notes on her blog.

This story has left me with very little to say. What can you possibly say about people with so little moral fiber?

Think about it, these young people could become leaders in the community.  They could become doctors, lawyers, business people, etc.,  the sadness is they will become voters. 

We never heard of such happenings back in the olden days.  If it happened, people would not have tolerated it.  The judges will give these monsters a slap on the wrists and they will serve very little time for the horrendous crime they have done. 

My husband and I were talking about this last night, how such a thing never even crossed our minds when we were young. And Lord knows, if we'd witnessed such an event, we wouldn't have just stood there.

Not long ago we came upon a head-on collision that had happened just moments before we arrived. One car had been thrown off into a ditch. Immediately we pulled over and ran to check on the occupants. A little 6-year old girl was slumped over in the backseat bleeding badly from a head wound.  Along with one other person who stopped to help we tried prying all the doors open, but none would budge. The back window was badly fractured so the person that stopped to help us kicked it and it caved in. We were able to get into the car and bring the little girl out, lay her on the ground and get some pressure on her bleeding head.  The mother was conscious, but hurt. We kept her in the car because she was crying about her leg and back hurting. We didn't want her to move.

Anyway, long story short, emergency crews arrived and even they had us assist them with the little girl and keeping the mother calm until they could extricate her. 

But, through all of this, car after car passed us on the road. They meandered around the pieces of glass and metal strewn across the road. They stared at us while we puzzled on how to get this bleeding child out of the car. They watched while we held towels to this child's head and waited for an ambulance.  And no one stopped. Just us and that one other guy had stopped to help.

I wondered over that for a long time. Why are so many people willing to be spectators but unwilling to be involved? I'm no doctor, but if someone is hurt I'll do what I can, even if all I can do is hold their hand.  How can someone just drive or walk away (or worse, just stand and watch) knowing that people are hurt? 

Same with these kids who watched the rape. My God, where was the humanity? The common sense that tells you someone is in trouble and needs help?  I always figured that was an innate sense in humans, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's something that must be learned, and too many people these days aren't learning it.

Then there's this poor young guy, an honour student, beaten to death while people took pictures on their cell phones.

16-year-old boy beaten to death in Roseland

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-teen_killed_roselandsep26,0,5094890.story

The Agape Community Center in Roseland has long been a sanctuary, a refuge for students who want to finish their homework, take Bible study courses or simply escape the chaotic streets in their Far South Side community.

But this place of refuge became the scene of a deadly melee Thursday when dozens of teenage boys converged in a vacant lot next to the community center, beating one another with fists, feet and 2-by-4s.

When it was all over, 16-year-old Derrion Albert lay on the gravel, his body dented and damaged from the pummeling. A youth worker at the center dragged Derrion's slight frame into the center, but it was too late. He died a short time later.

Witnesses and police said Friday that the Fenger High School junior was not a target but simply passed by the community center and was swept into the violent altercation. Walking from school, he fell victim to the violence plaguing some of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods.

The honor roll student known for his love of computers became the third Chicago teenager killed this month. At least seven more have been shot.

Police and witnesses say the melee was a culmination of a simmering rivalry between two groups of Fenger students, one that lived near the school and the other from the Altgeld Gardens housing development. Neighbors said the feud has been building since August, spilling across Roseland streets and, some say, into Fenger.

Shots were fired in front of Fenger earlier Thursday. No one was injured. Police said the two incidents don't appear to be related, but they were still looking for suspects in Derrion's slaying.

"This gang violence is escalating beyond control," said T'Awannda Piper, the youth worker who pulled Derrion into the building. "He was caught in it. The kids directly involved walked away healthy, and this kid didn't walk away at all."

The Fenger school principal declined to comment.

As friends propped teddy bears at the site of the beating -- creating the sort of street-side memorial that has become commonplace on the city's West and South Sides -- Derrion's family began planning a funeral for a young man who had dreams of going to college.

Derrion was small, only 5-foot-7. He was a "ladies' man" and a homebody, family members said.

Derrion's grandfather Joseph Walker sat in his living room, tearfully recounting his grandson's life. Displayed on the table in front of him was the honor roll report card and certificate for outstanding attendance.

"Derrion put his key in that door every day at 3:15," said Walker, who was taking care of the teenager. "He would get something to eat and get on the computer, where he would stay most of the night."

Walker said his grandson asked if he could hang out with some friends Thursday after school. Walker said OK, but insisted Derrion be back by 7 p.m.

He never made it. Witnesses said Derrion was near the community center, 342 W. 111th St., when a group of teenagers walking east met up with a group coming from the west. The fight began, they said, with about 10 teenagers. By the time it was finished, witnesses and police said, more than 50 youths were involved.

Milton Massie, executive director of Agape, said video from a surveillance camera atop the community center shows Derrion being struck in the back of the head and moving away from the crowd.

He fell to the gravel, next door to Agape, a Greek word for love.

Derrion's community of Roseland has been one of the city's most treacherous areas since the late 1980s, when the economic decline of the area led to urban decay and gang violence. In the mid-1990s, it gained notoriety as the stamping ground of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, the 11-year old who was executed by fellow gang members.

These days, too many of the community's youngsters end up in the police blotter or obituaries.

Diane Latiker has become so incensed by the violence in her community, and what she views as the city's seeming "indifference" to it, that she turned her Roseland home into an after-school community center for teenagers.

On Friday afternoon, dozens of area teens gathered there to cry about the death of a schoolmate and voice concerns that they might be next.

But after an hour, they went about their business of planning a Thanksgiving dinner for hungry families in the Roseland area.

"First they cry," she said. "But then they shake their heads and continue with their day, because it's become so commonplace to them. It's like, 'Oh well, another bump on the road.' They go on because it's the only way they can deal with it."

Now, Latiker wonders how she can possibly make room for Derrion's headstone. Latiker created a memorial two years ago to honor the young people killed in Chicago. Each time a child is shot, stabbed or beaten to death, she adds a stone to the memorial wall.

"We have 163 stones right now, but we are 20, now 21, behind," she said. "I thought, well, I hoped, I dreamed that there'd be more space on the wall than kids being killed."