ABC News
What Would You Do If You Witnessed a Break-In?
Black, White Teen Vandals Break Into a Car, Generating Different Responses From Public
By CLEM TAYLOR and NATALIE D. JAQUEZ

Feb. 20, 2008—

Editor's Note: The last name of each "What Would You Do?" participant was removed to protect his or her privacy.

It was an early spring afternoon in a suburban New Jersey park. Families, couples, runners and dog-walkers populated the area.

Attention was turned to a group of three white teenage boys walking toward a car an older, well-kept model in an open parking lot. They laughed at the car's "vintage" appearance.

Zac vaulted up on the car's hood and Justin K. looked around, furtively eyeing passersby. Meanwhile, Sam pulled a Jimmy stick from his pants and began breaking into the car.

Watch the premiere of the series "Primetime: What Would You Do?" Tuesday, Feb. 26 at 10 p.m. ET

"There it is! There it is!" The driver's side door popped open and the boys piled in, looking for anything worth taking.

People passed by but paid little or no attention to the mischief-makers, until the boys pulled out cans of paint and began spraying graffiti on the car.

A couple of women who engaged in brief conversation with the boys later said they were actually far more concerned about their well-being than they let on during the exchange.

"They [the boys] started getting increasingly strident and jumping on [the car] and pounding on it," said Laurette. "Then we said, 'Let's get away from this and call the police.'"

'You Got an Illegal Tool There!'

Shortly after, another couple of women noticed the boys. The women spoke, but both walked away from the scene.

While Maggie acknowledged, "I should have done something," Mary, the other woman, said she was reluctant to get involved.

"There have been times when I've been a witness to things and had to take off work, and it has been really involved. I try to mind my own business," said Mary.

Later, another middle-aged woman who seemed troubled by the teen vandals stopped a safe distance away from them and pulled out her cell phone. Was she typing a text message or contacting police?

When a fit middle-aged man who had just finished a run wandered past the boys and asked what they were up to, the boys bluntly told him to mind his own business.

As the man walked away, one of the boys yelled, "Adios, have a nice day," just to goad him. In doing so, the boys called the man's attention back to them and the car, angering him and heightening the confrontation.

And then he saw their Jimmy stick. "You got an illegal tool there! The cops would love to know that," he warned them. "That's a jimmy. That's an illegal tool. It's a felony. I suggest you pick it up and move on."

"We're not going nowhere," said Justin K., defiantly.

With that, the man walked off, and asked the woman with a cell phone to dial 911.

At that moment ABC News correspondent John Quinones jumped in, but the man, Brian, was pretty steamed at both the boys and at the "What Would You Do?" crew. When he finally cooled off, Brian and his wife, Dawn, stopped for a chat.

"I was keeping my eye on them. I was waiting for my husband to come back because I wasn't going to confront three boys by myself," Dawn told us.

Brian said he got involved because of a lesson his father taught him.

"You can't turn a blind eye or a deaf ear if somebody's in trouble," he said. "It wasn't [my property] but, you know, it was somebody's. We're all in this together."

Moments later, Brian and the actors exchanged apologies and handshakes.

Jack Dovidio, a psychology professor at Yale University, applauded Brian's actions, in spite of the possible risk he took.

"He took action that was selfless and was about stopping something bad from happening. He made a difference," Dovidio said. "I don't think it was the smart thing to do necessarily, but I think it was the good and right thing to do."

Sleeping Kids Generate 911 Calls

Three separate 911 calls were placed from the park that day: One was about the three white teens vandalizing the car, and the other two calls were from a man reporting the occupants of another car parked in a lot about 100 yards away from the scenario.

"There's a couple of guys in the car lying down, like, they look like possibly they're getting ready to rob somebody," the caller said.

A few minutes later, the caller was back on the line. "We got three black kids lying in the car," he said. "We have a lot of little kids around. I'm just keeping an eye on things."

As it turned out, the "three black kids" were the relatives of Justin C., a young African-American actor whom ABC News had hired for a later portion of the experiment. They were sleeping in the car while they waited for Justin C.

Justin C. said it was a hurtful reminder that racism is alive and well, and that people are still frightened by the color of other people's skin.

"Whether it's because of the media, because of history, we as Americans have an association with blacks and crime," Dovidio said, emphasizing that "both blacks and whites have that association."

Though Justin C.'s relatives were doing nothing more sinister than sleeping in their car, Dovidio said, "We can make that into a potential criminal act."

Black Vandals vs. White Vandals

Soon after those 911 calls were placed, the next phase of the experiment began. The three white teen vandals were replaced with Justin C., Jelani and "Matlok," three African-American actors. Would the responses to the vandals in this mostly white suburb be any different?

Just as the white actors had done, the three African-American vandals jumped on the car, spray-painted graffiti and used the jimmy stick to break into it. Almost immediately we noticed an increase in direct interventions and calls to 911.

A woman and a man walked by the scene at nearly the same time, and without much hesitation each pulled out their cell phones and reported the vandals to 911.

And while these two opted not to confront the boys directly, the next woman did. While walking her dachshund, Christina asked the boys what they were doing, to which one of them responded, "Having fun."

She walked a few yards further, called 911 to report them for "beating up a car," then continued on her way.

We spoke to all three of these passersby and while they expressed anger that many others had not gotten involved, they also seemed to understand the risk of doing so.

"I was shocked that the park had so many people and nobody was doing anything," said Robin, the first caller.

Thomas, who called around the same time, said he was just more comfortable calling 911 than confronting the kids directly.

"Teenagers are kind of unpredictable," Haller said. "Who knows? You hear all sorts of crazy stories. Moreover, he said, "They seemed like they weren't afraid of being caught."

Christina, in spite of having spoken to them, said she felt the boys were aggressive and therefore thought it best to call 911 instead of risking a confrontation.

"I wasn't going to go especially right up to them, because they had tools that could be used against me and there's three of them and one of me." And, she added, "my little dog."

Act First, Think Later

For every group of more timid souls, there was someone perfectly willing to confront trouble head-on, even at personal risk.

"Hey, is that your car?" yelled a woman who approached the boys with her husband and children.

"No, is it yours?" retorted Matlok.

"No, but you shouldn't be doing that," the woman scolded him.

Vanessa said she felt an immediate sense of outrage at the brazen act of vandalism.

"How dare you come in our backyard and do something like that in the middle of the day in front of our kids?" she said after her encounter with the boys.


(Safety Blitz interjects notice how instantly the AA kids do not belong)

"I don't care where you're from. I don't care what color you are," Vanessa added. "You know you're doing something illegal & you better believe I'm still going to call the police."

(Safetyblitz interjects again notice how she came back to clean up what she said before so that she does not appear to be racist)

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Here is the link to the REST of the story with Video so you can see the white kids and car the amazing part? Look at some of the comments. A lot of white people are mad about the story because it makes them look racist. LOL

Read view and judge for yourself as I was just amazed at the lack of logic of this.

ABC News: Response to Vandalism Varies With Race?