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

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

#181

Post by wahern »

SllX wrote: post #27
corndoge wrote: post #21

"Sibia caught a glimpse of a revolver in the man’s waist, and let go. The assailant slipped out just as the train doors closed behind him, he said." I was under the impression that concealed carry permits are extremely difficult to get in the vast majority of California?

Depends on the County. I think in the majority of counties it is relatively easy, but in the counties that people mostly live, not so much. San Francisco and LA County in particular make it nearly impossible.

It's effectively up to sheriff of the county wherein the applicant resides. The sheriff in San Francisco County wouldn't grant a permit if your life depended on it, not unless you're rich or famous. IIRC the sheriff in at least one rural county granted them as a matter of course out of principle, as if to spite the SF sheriff. As you say, in general rural sheriffs grant them much more liberally than urban sheriffs.

It helps if you know the sheriff or can be vouched for by someone the sheriff is familiar with. I imagine that in rural counties many middle-aged adults are only 1 or 2 degrees separated from the sheriff, anyhow, which suggests that rural and urban sheriffs are more alike then you'd think, especially if you exclude the two extremes; but the vast majority of people in urban areas will be too far removed from the sheriff's social circle. California's county-devolved permitting policies probably aren't quite as unequal and arbitrary as they superficially seem.

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

#182

Post by diogenescynic »

BurningFrog wrote: post #66
diogenescynic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all they do is give parking tickets. I’ve never seen them inside a train in 8 years.

Maybe they travel undercover, all the time?

Lol so they travel undercover and never stop any crimes? Seems like an unlikely scenario.

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

#183

Post by diogenescynic »

userbinator wrote: post #47
rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminals don’t bother to try and get permits.

"If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns."

And yet the countries that make obtaining guns more difficult are still much safer. It’s almost like if you rigorously regulate guns and have strict background checks, you can dramatically reduce gun violence... see Japan or Switzerland as proof where you can still own a gun but they don’t have mass shootings like we do here. And no, mental illness isn’t the issue. We have roughly the same amount of mentally ill as other countries, it’s the easy access to funds that explains the 10x increase in gun violence.

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

#184

Post by tdumitrescu »

Judgmentality wrote: post #10
tdumitrescu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK bart police are actual peace officers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit_Polic... I remember i used to see ads of theirs years ago, prominently displaying their 150K starting salary. Anecdotally, i agree that riding bart has felt sketchier the past few years. I generally ride from SF to Lake Merritt or 12th St Oakland.

> prominently displaying their 150K starting salary I thought that seemed high, but they are still paid quite well. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Bart-Police-Officer-Salarie...

Just going by my memory of what they advertised. Here's a TSV with some public salary data from 2012:https://gist.github.com/shabbychef/5915640

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

#185

Post by manfredo »

admax88q wrote: post #149
pteredactyl wrote: post #115

Same is true for San Francisco. Criminals have more rights than children. Or taxpayers... If we are to have a functional civilization we must remain open but also learn how to say no to unacceptable behavior. Especially the egregious. Like you see everyday. People littering, shooting up and shitting on the sidewalk. Meanwhile our legislators are passing laws to limit the amount of restaurants in certain neighborhoods…

You're the second person I've seen to say "Criminals have more rights than children" Where do you get your talking points from?

I can't speak for the above commenter, but in a way street people in SF really are more free than employed people. If I were to break into a car and steal stuff I'd get jailed and released a couple days later, or even the same day. But I'd probably get fired. Whereas someone with no job would get jaled and released with no real consequences. Because the city refuses to enforce many crimes (basically, anything short of significant violence) beyond catching and releasing, the only thing keeping people in line are their employers and peers. And if someone doesn't have a job and their peers don't care about committing crimes, then a whole bunch of stuff becomes de-facto legal.

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

#186

Post by rorykoehler »

m1sta_ wrote: post #155
esotericn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this just an American thing? Healthcare funding, or something? I've never been to SF, but I've visited NYC, and the subway there feels like stepping in to a horror movie. During a two week visit I saw people passing out and being ignored (I was the only one attempting to help), individuals swinging around bricks in socks, and various other obvious examples of severely mentally ill individuals. In London I've never…

It’s due to a failure to enforce the law. The reason for that failure is needs to be addressed.

Is it really though? I feel like Americans regularly say things like this (guns is another similar topic) which only reflects an inability to think many steps down the line from the outcome. There is something deeper at play and I would suspect that it has to do with economic insecurity and lack of opportunity which is further compounded by a lack of education and social cohesion in general. American values are all wrong. You only need to look at the Black Friday mayhem for an example.

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

#187

Post by masonic »

diogenescynic wrote: post #176
masonic wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original design for the Bay Bridge retrofit was $400 million. Instead, we got a less-safe, grandiose art piece for over $8 billion. $400 million more if you want a bike lane.

Is this corruption or incompetence? I honestly think it’s corruption. Why can’t we just outsource this to a European engineering company that is capable of accomplishing this? It just makes no sense to me.

Of course it's corruption (in this case, Jerry Brown and Willie Brown and their minions being the primary drivers).

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

#188

Post by wahern »

userbinator wrote: post #73
Bud wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should do absolutely anything other than increasing the number of guns in a crowded, enclosed space.

The more likely it is for criminals to be fatally shot by everyone around them if they try to do anything, the less likely they're going to try --- even if they themselves have a gun, they're going to be outnumbered.

That logic makes some sense in rural areas where it's a safe assumption that many, if not most, homeowners are armed. Where I grew up, anybody thinking of breaking into a house or even of trespassing had to contend with the very real possibility of being shot at; not only were guns common, but many people kept them loaded and readily accessible.

But in areas where few law-abiding citizens are armed and most people have no inclination to arm themselves, all lax gun laws do is put more guns in the hands of high-risk individuals. In most of the incidents discussed in this thread pepper spray would have been more than sufficient to thwart an attacker, but nobody is carrying that, either.

It's also worth pointing out that in rural areas you're rarely in a situation where you're in physically close proximity to potentially dangerous people. I suspect both urban and rural folks are similarly averse to escalating violence, but there's much more ambiguity in urban environments, which explains why people don't even bother carrying, let alone using, pepper spray in cities, whereas in extremely rural areas people keep loaded shotguns in the corner. That and violence is much less common than we believe, and we actually behave accordingly even though we say that we feel unsafe. The calculus is the same in both urban and rural areas, but the input parameters produce wildly different results.

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

#189

Post by [deleted] »

claydavisss wrote: post #62
jeffdavis wrote: post #16

Maybe they should issue more concealed carry permits in bay area counties. It's wrong for the police to simultaneously neglect your protection and also prevent you from protecting yourself.

Even if you were to get the veritable Golden Ticket and land one of the hundred or so CCWs in SF, using your firearm in California, even in self defense, would result in your life being ruined. Move to a SHALL ISSUE state. I did.

[deleted]

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

#190

Post by King-Aaron »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #180
King-Aaron wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I smoke pot, and don't like the idea of being targeted at train stations because I smoked a spliff the night before while wearing the same sweater. FYI I am not 'poor' and I do have a small fleet of my own cars, but people with a small quantity of money behind them a) also like to smoke drugs on occasion and b) also do use public transport. Edit: I realize that sounded a bit snide, apologies. I think my point is that…

I guess calling it all-out fascist is perhaps a hyperbole. But it's creeping authoritarianism. To me though, having police posted with dogs at train stations just looks especially authoritarian. Police dogs (whether drug dogs or attack dogs) are primarily a tool for intimidation.

I agree with you tbh. Considering the tremendous false positive rate with sniffer dogs too, I find the use of them especially hard to justify as anything other than intimidation.

Got to remember though that when police do big operations like that, they may also often be looking for one specific target/individual, but have to use a blanket approach to apprehend them. So while you may be caught up in the "random" checks, they may just be using it as a facade to catch a truly dangerous person.

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