Today when I was walking home from running some errands, I saw some men down the street playing kind of rough on the sidewalk.  At first I thought they were just joking around, bothering the guy who was sitting down, but something didn't seem quite right about it.  As I paused to observe before walking any closer, one of the guys took the man's shoulder and started shaking him.  Then he and the other one took the man and threw him headfirst into the wall.  At this point, I turned around, intending to step into a nearby store and ask what would be the best way of responding to that kind of emergency.  But there was a group of women right behind me, and by the time I stepped around them and looked back to see if the men were still there, they were gone, all but the one who had been getting beat up.  A storeowner was standing on the sidewalk having some kind of interchange with the man (not a particularly pleasant one from the way it looked), and someone else stood across the street holding his phone like he was ready to make a phone call.  I stayed back with the women, watching from a distance, until that man in question walked away.  The man seemed to be unharmed, but he also seemed to arguing with the storeowner, so I don't know what was going on.  After a few minutes, he slunk away.  Then the street cleared and those of us who had been waiting continued on our way.

It was only after the fact that I remembered I have a sticker on the back of my phone with the emergency number here: *911.  I'll have to remember that...it's good to know.