The disturbing video below shows a women being beaten by two other women as McDonald employees do virtually nothing to help her. While a manager makes a minimal effort to stop the fight, he then walks away and does not offer help to the woman on the ground. The girls then return and resume the beating. Other employees are shown doing nothing but watching the scene. The attack occurred in Baltimore, Maryland. The victim has now been identified as Chrissy Lee Polis, 22, who has been identified as a transgender woman. A manager at the Rosedale McDonald’s said she was “not allowed to speak to a reporter.”
According to reports, a 14-year-old female has been charged as a juvenile while charges are pending against an 18-year-old female.
The question is the liability of McDonald’s for this type of passivity. Companies often tell employees not to get involved in fights but simply call police. However, here the McDonald’s employees are not even showing any interest in helping the woman when the fight stopped. Liability, however, will remain a difficult course if the manager called the police –which is viewed as the minimally required response. However, this is not a case of any affirmative duty to rescue — where the American rule is that no such duty exists absent responsibility for the original danger or injury. This woman is a business invitee and the company bears responsibility for the safe conditions for customers. McDonald’s must also anticipate criminal acts. However, no law requires a manager to physically intervene. What is most disturbing is the absence of anyone rendering aid to this woman.
The fact is that this manager may be doing exactly what McDonald’s wants employees to do: nothing. It will be interesting to see if McDonald’s instructs managers not to render aid in in such circumstances.
The manager encourages the attackers to flee before the police arrive. He can certainly defend this advice as simply a way to remove the dangerous individuals from the scene. However, it would have been more convincing if it was combined with a modicum of concern for the victim.
McDonald’s seems a common site for violence, including additional stories this week. One has to wonder how long the employee, identified as Vernon Hackett, on social network accounts, posted the video clip to his YouTube page earlier who took and posted the video has as an employee with the Golden Arches.
There is no word on what is being done to find the culprits. There have also been suggestions that the attack was racially motivated. The incident involved two young black women repeatedly attacking an older white woman.
McDonald’s released the following statement:
“We are shocked by the video from a Baltimore franchised restaurant showing an assault. This incident is unacceptable, disturbing and troubling. McDonald’s strives to be a safe, welcoming environment for everyone who visits. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of customers and employees in our restaurants. We are working with the franchisee and the local authorities to investigate this matter.”
Notably, the company made no mention of the failure to help the patron or what its policy or training says about addressing such incidents.
Ok,WOW!…I guess it’s time for one of my famous”I can’t believe this is my country” lectures,wait,never mind, i’m getting kind of sick of that one…
Racist blacks are also targeting and attacking lots of non-black people where I am in London(UK) – McDonalds restaurants are especially dangerous, because blacks like eating there so much……………
Attack on the transgendered woman now charged as a hate crime. From the Baltimore Sun:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2011/05/hate_crime_charges_in_mcdonald.html
Great update Buddha.That is a disgusting story. I think Macs better get their wallet out because I think they were not only negligent in allowing the attack to go on, but it sounds like the employees enjoyed the beating. Kudo’s to the woman who tried to help.
UPDATE:
From AP story: Witness to Md. beating praised for trying to help (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_videotaped_beating)
“ROSEDALE, Md. – A witness who tried to help a transgender woman who was being beaten at a McDonald’s in Maryland said she was overwhelmed by the response from people who have praised her for intervening.
Vicky Thoms was embraced by strangers at a rally Monday night outside the McDonald’s in Baltimore County where the assault took place.
The victim, 22-year-old Chrissy Lee Polis, decided not to attend, but Thoms said she wished she had come so she could give her a hug.
Thoms said she walked into the restaurant April 18 and saw two teens beating Polis. No one was helping the woman and one bystander was even recording the attack with his cell phone camera, she said.
Thoms told The Baltimore Sun she watched for about two minutes but decided to step in because she thought Polis would be killed. When she stepped up and asked the girls to stop, Thoms ended up getting punched in the face herself, she said.
“She hit me like a man would hit and she was 14 years old,” she said.
Afterward, a man behind the counter asked Thoms if she realized the person being beaten was not a woman and was transgendered.
“I told him, `No I didn’t and I don’t care,'” she said. “He said he worked with her and she had a smart mouth — in other words, she deserved it.”
Teonna Monae Brown, 18, was arrested Friday and charged with first- and second-degree assault. A 14-year-old girl has been charged as a juvenile. Prosecutors are reviewing other charges are warranted including hate crimes counts.“
@Pete,
“you are are an ignorant racist”
Apparently citing facts (per the DOJ) on interracial crime makes me a racist. But name calling and personal attacks are usually the mark of a true intellectual.
Your tactics are so profound. Were you a member of the Harvard debate club?
That said. I like playing your games. You are a doo-doo face. Check and mate.
OK, so I’m a fossil. But I miss “the good ol’ days” when people were just plain nicer. Not everyone, to be sure, but on the whole? You bet they were.
These days “diversity” is so politically correct and explicit. We have to teach kids from the time they can walk that they have to embrace diversity and love everyone for their differences. I think this is backward and encourages much more division than unity. Now we teach kids not to hit Juan because he is hispanic or Bobby because he is gay or Pam because she is in a wheelchair or whatever. Anything anyone does to anyone who is a member of a specific group is now considered a hate crime. Back in my day we simply were taught that we didn’t hit Juan or Bobby or Pam because it was wrong to hit. It was our behavior that was corrected and what the other person was simply wasn’t mentioned because it was irrelevant. Wrong behavior was wrong. Period.
There were no “hate” crimes because victimizing someone for no better reason than because you didn’t like that person because of who he or she was would simply have been wrong – you at least had to have a personal reason. We were taught that there is nothing wrong with feeling resentment or anger if we were personally wronged – what was important was how to handle the “injustice” in ways other than fighting or getting revenge.
Making such a big deal about having to embrace diversity has the opposite effect. People will always notice difference but instead of getting people to overlook them, all the political correctness of focusing on differences just makes everyone feel that they, themselves, need to be focused on for some reason or other or they’ll be left out. The result ends up being resentment toward everyone who is identified for their diversity. It’s stupid.
So, hate crimes were null and void. Hurting other people was simply wrong, and only personal injury would at least have been an acceptable excuse.
Excessive brutality was punished more excessively because the person was punished for just being cruel – it didn’t matter to whom. Excess wasn’t linked to the reason. Excess was excess. As in, you might have to fight to fend off an attacker but excess would have been pursuing aggression once your attacker gave up. Excess was punished for no other reason than that it was excess. Again, hate or any other reason was beside the point. If hate was an issue, you would have been cared for by your teacher, your principal, your parents, your family, your minister, your scout leader, whoever was in your life to help you calm down and behave in a more Christian way. If there were underlying problems, we all dealt with those so that we could heal and learn to control ourselves and be civil.
Unfortunately, I see a lot of uncivil dialogue in this blog. I’m very angry about the McD incident. I participated in this blog to vent my frustration at such a hideous display, not to demonstrate how rude I could be. The McD beating is a personal offense, not because it violated me, personally, but because it is symptomatic of the typical assault on decency that is so commonplace these days and I take that very personally. But I’m not going to get vindictive or vitriolic about it. Sadly, some of the language and lack of respect shown in this blog are only smaller examples of such an assault on decency and consideration. It would be good to see something as old-fashioned as apologies and a resumption of civil debate. What do you say?
The victim in the McDonald’s beating is now speaking out. She is indeed a transgender woman. Her name is Chrissy Lee Polis.
Here is her interview:
Breitbart is hardly a credible source for anything.
re: “One has to wonder how long the employee, identified as Vernon Hackett, on social network accounts, posted the video clip to his YouTube page earlier who took and posted the video has as an employee with the Golden Arches.” -Jonathan Turley
Predicatably, it didn’t take long…
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/mcdonalds/mcdonalds-fires-employee-who-filmed-beating-102975
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=d8s39u500
A jury awarded $6.1 million Friday to a woman who said she was forced to strip in a McDonald’s back office after someone called the restaurant posing as a police officer.
Louise Ogborn, 21, had sued McDonald’s Corp., claiming the fast-food giant failed to warn her and other employees about the caller who already struck other McDonald’s stores and other fast-food restaurants across the country.
Ogborn was forced to undress, endure a strip search, and to perform sexual acts, the lawsuit said. The events were captured on surveillance video, which was shown to jurors during the trial.
kay
i believe you’re right. i don’t remember where i saw it. i just checked here back a few years and don’t see it, although i might not be using good search words.
i recall the female mgr had a female employee strip while mgrs boyfriend watched and stayed in the office with the employee for several hours.
doesn’t seem like it’s been long enough ago for any resolution on it though.
but i may be wrong about details
Wasn’t it a McDonalds where a young female employee was forced to strip etc by a manager taking orders from a police impersonator while other employees did nothing until wasn’t it a janitor who finally helped her?
Didn’t McDonalds lose a $5 Million + lawsuit over that?
mavbe it’s time to get away from the old “men” or “women” (thats “bulls” and “heifers” for ya’ll in texas) choice for restrooms.
maybe it’s time for “men” “women” and “other”.
(for texans thats “bulls” “heifers” and “steers”)
anon: Meh.