At about 10 am on Wednesday morning, I was running in Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, when I saw a lot of commotion a few hundred meters up the road. As I got closer, I saw several police cars, an ambulance, and suited authorities inspecting the scene. A man lay motionless on a stretcher, one arm hanging lifelessly off the edge, as medical personnel lifted him into the ambulance, their efforts to resuscitate him a mere formality.

The middle-aged black man was dressed in dirty clothes and old work boots, his shirt open, revealing a barrel-shaped chest. About 20 minutes later, as I passed the scene on my second loop, the cars had cleared out, but the investigation carried on. The police had cordoned off the entire area -- a sheltered plot with several picnic tables underneath -- with tape. It may have been a murder, an overdose, a suicide or death by natural causes.

But I was not there to report on the death; I was just a passerby like the many other people in the park that morning, all of whom passed much as I did: without stopping or even looking beyond a quick glance. Perhaps, being city-dwellers, we're just accustomed to minding our own business. Or maybe we don't care.

And this is what I spent the rest of my run thinking about: When we see a dead man in a public place, shouldn't we stop and think of all the injustices that may have led to that death? I thought of poverty, addiction and violence, as well as the lack of sufficient social services to help those who suffer from all of the above. I thought of the man's life, which couldn't have been spent entirely on the street, because he was a reasonably healthy looking man over 40. What happened that led him to this lonesome end?

Of course, the problems are deep and systemic, too numerous to solve with a few idealistic initiatives. But I, for one, am thinking about those problems more today than I was yesterday. And it's a shame that it took seeing a dead man in the park to do it.

[Image: Prospect Park]