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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)

#51

Post by School-Cotton »

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…

I don’t like the police any more than you do, but calling police presence in train stations “straight up fascist” cheapens the term.

When you call every slightly authoritarian policy “straight up fascist”, nobody will take you seriously when you denounce actually fascist regimes.

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

#52

Post by trevyn »

krackers wrote: post #37
jopsen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably safer to just carry a little extra cash and pay off the robbers..

I don't think that's a good idea. Seeing you have some cash on hand is a signal that you are more well-of and they might be more incentivized than they were previously to take your bag/wallet/etc. Basically there's no incentive for them to stop at just taking that extra cash when they can take that and whatever else they were planning to.

The trick is to dramatically throw all the cash into the air and run. :)

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

fareesh wrote: post #34
ryanmonroe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this story related to these political movements you're describing? The events in the article seem like the usual robberies, unrelated to any political cause.

Like I said it seems like the local governments in both these places which share the same politics, are involved in actively holding back the local police force from doing their jobs. Is it not reasonable to hold the local government responsible for safety on the train? Given their track record for asking the police to be hands off, isn't the prevalence of unchecked crime in trains, crime on campuses and crime on the…

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by bhengaij »

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…

Chalk it up to a person living life in a cozy office to call cops with drug dogs fascism. If you knew what fasicsm is and people who suffered it (my maternal grandfather) did, I can bet you wont ever use that word again. I don't like a lot of current political leaders either but the way eyeball and click hungry media uses this term and the regular audience eagerly laps them up is disgusting.

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

#55

Post by ryanmonroe »

fareesh wrote: post #43
ryanmonroe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it. Crime is up on the subway, so you think this is part of a politically motivated strategy to "[hold] back the police force from doing their jobs"? The article says they have a lot of vacancies. Maybe they can't find people who want the job? Maybe their budget for policeman salaries doesn't fare well compared to the area housing prices? I could think of quite a few possible reasons for a rise in crime b…

Of course it can be many of those things. I was just pointing out that policing does not seem to be favored by the local government. In most of those other instances there were police officers available, so availability of police in the general case has not been the reason for why crimes were not stopped, when there was ample opportunity to stop them.

I don't believe there is this large "criminal apologist" political force as you say there is. On the example you gave of a decision to hold back police force at an Antifa counterprotest, the police chief gave this explanation: "If police had deployed tear gas, they could have dispersed the black bloc, but they also would have gassed hundreds of peaceful protesters – including seniors and children – who had marched over from a “Say No to Hate” rally at nearby Ohlone Park." So they were concerned about injuring civilians, and moved in after all the non-criminals fleed, arresting 13 people.

But even if there was this political motive to allow leftists to break laws with impunity, that has nothing to do with this story. This story is about run-of-the-mill robberies. Antifa doesn't run around robbing random people, and I don't think you'll find any influential bay-area politicians arguing against arresting people for robbery.

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

#56

Post by Bud »

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.

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

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

#57

Post by dokein »

This is, I think, partially the result of decriminalization. When a vocal sub-population says "oh no, but poor people have no agency, and therefore no choice but to commit crime / evade fares, etc. and we should be more lenient" this is the result. And the people who suffer the disproportionately are the working class who rely on public transit.

Even if BART doesn't have enough officers, spending a few thousand to put up high-def cameras so some other PD can kick open these assailants' doors and arrest them would help significantly.

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

#58

Post by pmiller2 »

diogenescynic wrote: post #28
BurningFrog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think crimes on Bart are the jurisdiction of Bart police. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit_Police_...

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

Parking tickets are their main thing, true, but I have seen them inside trains. More often, my train is delayed by “police activity” somewhere in the BART system. Because there’s no way to route around most stations, those delays end up cascading through the whole system, no matter where they originate.

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

#59

Post by closeparen »

School-Cotton wrote: post #46
twblalock wrote: post #38

This is why it's hard to get support for public transit funding. People don't want to take public transit if they will fear for their lives, or be surrounded by drug addicts and mentally disturbed people yelling at and spitting on other passengers. BART trains and stations are like this on a regular basis; Muni has the same problems but not as bad. I've seen this kind of thing happen on Caltrain late at night also, b…

I don’t have the numbers to back this up, but I strongly suspect that if the true cost of driving (both in terms of environmental destruction and massive land use and construction cost for roads and parking lots) were reflected in the price of cars or gas, people simply wouldn’t be able to afford the luxury of a private commute, and mass transit systems would be able to compete even without any public funding at all.

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 traffic, let alone 101 or 280. People physically won’t fit into the vehicles. There are decade-scale projects to address that, and I support them, but I don’t expect to see their fruits during my working life. Anyone working now is going to be retired by the time a second Transbay Tube starts passenger service, assuming we vote to fund it right now.

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