Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit)

Post by woolvalley » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 2:14 AM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #45

In Melbourne, we have a special police force (protective services officers) to patrol train stations at night. The anti-authoritarian in my dislikes them, but by all accounts (especially from my female friends), they're actually great. Their mandate is only to stop violence and disorderly behaviour, and they're actually super chill. Ticket inspection and fare evasion isn't part of their purview, which means they're n…

Post by ryanmonroe » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 2:17 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #113

ryanmonroe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone decides not to be a police officer because they aren't allowed to shoot unarmed civilians in the back while they're being held face down on the ground, BART is safer without them.

The BART police are afraid of being falsely accused even when they are in the right, because of the legacy of the Oscar Grant case, so they are overly timid about confronting criminals. The police were wrong in the Oscar Grant case, but the consequences for public safety have been very negative as a result of the public reaction.

Post by pteredactyl » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #85

darpa_escapee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don't want to be caught in the cross-fire between a criminal and a layman trying to be a hero.

What if that layman isn't trying to be a hero. What if they are just exercising their right to protect themselves or their family? When the police in a municipality have the monopoly right to posess and use force to protect citizens, then citizens should expect them to actually keep them safe. If they fail in this duty, citizens should have recourse. Oakland in particular has a very difficult problem prosecuting crim…

Post by SamReidHughes » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #83

ransom1538 wrote: post #13

If you take BART and ride into Oakland -- you are on your own. There is no one that will protect you. My next door neighbor was assaulted. She was brutalized. Sigh. It was bad. THEN she went home, reported it with police. This is where it gets weird. The people that assaulted her -- armed with her ID card went to her APARTMENT -- luckly she was somewhere else with her parents. The people that brutalized her ransacked…

This ideology of inaction, or "nothing" we can do about it, is a phenomenon unique to the bay area. I used to live there, and it is one of the reasons I left. Criminal activity is not pursued, bad behavior is not penalized. I'm sure there are many reasons, but I suspect a big factor is that police and politicians are afraid of cracking down due to the political fallout and backlash. There is a palpable disdain for po…

Post by masonic » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 2:21 AM UTC

jblow wrote: post #91

closeparen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you are describing a situation in which commuters are strictly worse off. It’s unlikely they will vote for that. Remember also that existing transit links are beyond fully saturated. It’s not really possible for people to switch to transit en masse before the decades it takes us to build bus terminals and train tunnels have elapsed. No public transit system has the slack to absorb the Bay Bridge drive-alone…

The original Bay Bridge was built in 3 years, with 1930s technology. We used to not be a bunch of incompetent idiots when it came to building infrastructure, but now we clearly are. I understand why people don’t want to pay large amounts of tax money to pay incompetent idiots to take a long time building tiny amounts of infrastructure.