By Mariana Prandi, Translator and Lawyer.
Fifty-nine years ago today, in the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old woman of Italian descent, was stabbed to death while trying to enter the building where she lived in Queens, New York.
Two weeks after the event, The New York Times published an article mentioning that there had been thirty-eight witnesses to the attack and none had called the police. It was later proven that the information published by the newspaper was not completely correct.
Whatever the specific number of witnesses to Kitty’s murder – one would be enough – no one called for help. And it was not so difficult, a phone call would have been enough.
The case is studied in social psychology textbooks. The «Genovese syndrome» or «bystander effect» is a psychological phenomenon whereby a person does not act when he or she should be providing assistance.
In 1968, social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané conducted an experiment at New York University. In the context of a so-called debate, one of the students told the participants that he was having an epileptic seizure and asked them for help. The results were surprising; only 31 percent of the volunteers in the experiment reacted actively with respect to the troubled student.
One of the conclusions derived from the experiment is the existence of «diffusion of responsibility,» which implies that each person who witnesses an event is less able to intervene because he or she thinks that someone else will do it and disengages.
And a social consequence derived from the attack on Kitty Genovese is that it was convenient that the number to call was easy to remember, because it is important to act quickly in an emergency situation.
That is why the Federal Communications Commission met with two telephone companies in order to implement a single emergency number.
On February 16, 1968, the first call was received on the number chosen: 911. Almost four years had passed since the tragic incident that led to its implementation.
Kitty Genovese became the protagonist of history without knowing it.
