The idea of anyone helping was a business liability concern, but the insistent bystanders wanted to balance that out with anything they thought they "could" do. Both the firestation and the police (because they had nothing else to do in their tiny area) were called but took a while because Winter was in its cusp at the time.

Ironically it was the fact the police understood the bystanders' intentions that made citizens (who thought it was a burglary) accuse everyone in charge of being overly sympathetic to what they thought was immigration-spawned crime. Police even made a public statement about the bystanders' intentions, but the citizens didn't believe the police on that.