Discussions

That's the unfortunate situation I was put in as I was driving through downtown onto Pacific Avenue off of 7th street this evening.  
 
Two people I would estimate were in their earlier-mid 20's were systematically kicking and punching a lone middle age man on the sidewalk to the point that he was lying on the ground and had a bit of bleeding from the mouth.  
 
My first instinct was to do what I could within reason to stop it. My initial response was to lock my doors and pull up next to them.. literally 6 feet away, start honking my horn and pull out my phone so that they could see I was making a call. The part that shocked me the most was that one of them took one quick look at me and then carried on with the assault for another minute like I wasn't even there, as if they've done it enough times before to know they had a few minutes before they'd have anything to worry about. When they were done they made a few gestures at the victim and then calmly walked along as if they were on a typical Sunday stroll.  
 
After it was over and I was on the phone reporting what I saw, I drove around and saw the same two walking back toward the same area of the initial incident as if nothing had happened.  
 
Question is, if you had seen these two how do you think you would have reacted in the split second you have to make a decision? As random as it seemed, I have no way of knowing for sure what precipitated it.... but what as a community/city should we be doing to prevent these kinds of incidents from happening in Sunday evening daylight? If you were the actual assault victim, what would you have liked to have been able to do within the law to make an attack like that seem like a bad idea to two people with less than honorable intentions?