I have a story to tell that I have to get off my chest.

Two nights ago I was falling asleep and I heard faint screaming. I wasn't sure where it was coming from, but I decided to look out my window. Across the street is the parking lot of a different apartment complex. There was a car with a woman on top of the windshield. She was screaming and periodically would punch and kick the windshield of the car.

Then I saw the car accelerate and decelerate around the parking lot in an attempt to get her off, like a bull trying to get a bull rider off. I was appalled. I immediately called the police and gave a quick yell out the window saying "Hey, stop!" or something. She very well could have fell off, been run over, and died. At the end of it my girlfriend also was screaming out the window to tell her to get off and stop. She was able to get the girl to start talking, then the man inside the car started talking. Turns out she cheated on him, the man wanted to break up and get away, and she didn't want to let their relationship end. When my girlfriend said we were calling the police the woman finally got off the car, the man opened the door, let her in, and they drove away.

The next day I called the local police department because after having hung up with 911 that night, I learned that the man in the car's name was Alex. I figured that providing that information to the police might be useful. Hopefully there'd only be one male resident named Alex in the apartment complex who is living with a girl and owns a hatchback car.

The lady I talked to sounded annoyed that I called and thought that this was nothing. When I described what happened she immediately blamed the woman, saying that she shouldn't have been on top of the car kicking and banging in the first place. Of course. But two wrongs don't make a right. That doesn't give the man the right to w recklessly endanger her life like that.

Then she got to asking me what my new information was. I said how I learned that the guy's name is Alex and that maybe they could track him down. She said there's nothing to track down and to call back if I see anything violent happen. But she also asked me what my thinking is. So I explained that a) what the man did seems illegal and probably worth pursuing criminally, and b) he might be a danger. The lady looked at me like I had two heads. She asked me: did you see a gun? A knife? Punches? Shoving? Anything violent? No, but the guy could have ran her over or seriously injured her. Seems like a dangerous person. Domestic violence seems very plausible. Seems worth following up on.

Here's where we get into rationality a little bit. After hearing me out, she explained that all of this is just my opinion. I don't have any "facts", like seeing a gun or a punch being thrown. To her, "facts" like those would be a sign that the man was dangerous and maybe worth following up on, but here it's merely my opinion that a guy who tries to whip someone off the roof of his car is dangerous.

I am seeing three (related) errors in her logic. The first is having an arbitrary cutoff for what "counts" as evidence. As explained in Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence, rational evidence is anything that "moves the needle" but in various social institutions they may have arbitrary cutoffs for what "counts" for whatever reasons, like how science often has the cutoff of p < 0.05. It's possible that there is a good reason why she is drawing the cutoff here. It seems highly unlikely though. But more to the point, she seemed to be saying that because it is merely my opinion, it doesn't even count as rational evidence. That "I have nothing". I would have thought that someone working in law enforcement would be better at assessing danger than this.

But this brings me to the second error: belief in belief. I don't think that she actually would predict this man in the car to be an average threat. I don't think she would be happy to find herself crossing paths with him in a back alley. Yet she professed as if all of this is merely my opinion which I'm not basing on any "hard facts" and thus there's no reason to suspect anything of this man.

Third error: fallacy of grey. Even if you want to draw an arbitrary line between opinion and fact, all opinions aren't created equally. Some shades of grey are darker than others. Some opinions are stronger indicators than others.

It's sad because there really does seem to be a practical path forward here. Maybe there were cameras that captured it. Maybe there were other witnesses. I'd imagine that there would be. They were screaming pretty loudly, the car was screeching, and there were a lot of other apartments in the vicinity. Most of which were closer than mine. Mine was across the street and my window was closed. And even if you don't want to prosecute the man for some sort of reckless endangerment it seems worth following up with the woman to see if there is any domestic abuse going on and if she feels safe.

Maybe this just doesn't relate to me and so I should stop talking about it? Maybe. Or maybe the police officer's rationality is my business, given that I am a member of the community that she is policing and trying to keep safe. It's certainly the business of the girl who could have been ran over.

Another sad thought: there is a security patrol that is usually stationed maybe 200 feet away from where this all happened. I couldn't see if they were out there from my window, but last night I was out for a bike ride, saw a security car stationed in that usual spot. I told him what happened the previous night and asked if he thinks there might have been someone stationed there. He said there probably was because they're supposed to be out all night, but that they wouldn't have been able to do anything. They are contracted by some factory nearby and if he said if he left his post for something unrelated to the factory like that that he'd be fired on the spot. These experiences have all shifted my beliefs about just how inflexible and inhumane bureaucracies can be.