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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)

#71

Post by closeparen »

Bud wrote: post #63
pfarnsworth wrote: post #14

My coworker was sexually assaulted on the BART, on the East Bay side of the tracks. A group of youths started sitting around her, took off her headphones, groped her, took her picture several times with them groping her, laughed and then left after terrorizing her for 10 minutes unabated. There was nothing she could do, she is a tiny, attractive Asian female sitting by herself and no one stepped in to help her (to be…

"These days"? So there was some magical protection against criminals in the past, which no longer exists?

Yes, it was called the criminal justice system. At some point along the way we decided to have a minimal police force and prosecute only the most obvious and heinous crimes, letting all kinds of “low level” stuff like this become effectively consequence-free.

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

#72

Post by Fins »

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?

Wouldn't it make sense that somebody committing armed robbery on a train quite possibly doesn't need no stinkin' permit to carry a gun.

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

#73

Post by userbinator »

Bud wrote: post #56
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.

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.

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

#74

Post by rdtsc »

jopsen wrote: post #20
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.

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

That depends on the context. There is a criminal culture in every country, city, etc. In some parts if you delay or are trying to negotiate you'll be killed.

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

#75

Post by esotericn »

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…

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 seen anything like it.

It genuinely felt like stepping in to some sort of twilight zone. Compounded by the fact that other commuters seemed jaded, as if it was normal to be regularly surrounded by individuals who act more like rogue AIs than human beings.

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

#76

Post by toomanybeersies »

School-Cotton wrote: post #51
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.

Having police with drug dogs, posted at train stations to catch random people with personal quantities of drugs is straight up fascist in my opinion.

Drug use crosses socioeconomic lines, yet drug dogs at train stations (targeted in the poorer suburbs too) ends up unfairly targeting poor people (who are often minorities), especially as wealthier people tend to drive rather than take public transport. Send some drug dogs through the bank offices on a Friday evening and see how much coke you find. Instead they're busting poor people for having a gram of weed on them.

Personally, I'd rather that they didn't have drug dogs at all, they tend to victimise users rather than actually stop the root cause of the "problem" (I'm not a fan of drug prohibition at all), i.e. the dealers and the traffickers. Drug traffickers aren't going to be transporting commercial quantities of drugs on the train, they're going to be driving cars. Drug dogs are also generally ineffective and respond more to their handlers signals than actually detecting drugs by scent and are therefore susceptible to their handlers biases, further victimising minorities.

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

#77

Post by geerlingguy »

It doesn't seem quite that bad in St. Louis, but the Metrolink has a lot of similar characteristics.

Just the fact that all the platforms are open (there are no turnstiles, so you don't even need to pay a cent to board a train or lurk on a platform, any time of day) seems like a major contributing factor.

And in my recent rides, maybe 1/5 times would there ever be a person checking tickets.

It's definitely a chicken-and-egg problem here—nobody wants the lines expanded if their only experiences are dodgy and slow at best. And it doesn't help that the local news seems to highlight all the public transit crimes on a weekly basis (especially on slower news weeks).

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

#78

Post by Fins »

Wait, I was told here so many times that SV is the best place to live if you want to get anywhere in life, and that people who do not take public transit are mean evil nature-hating bourgeois pigs. /s

Interesting that a couple comments that deal with the problem have already been downvoted to death.

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

#80

Post by toomanybeersies »

rdtsc wrote: post #65
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…

> full fledged police officers with drug dogs at train stations, which is straight up fascist. Hmm. Is it the dogs that make them fascists? The uniform? Yeah you shouldn't talk to the police and all that but going straight to fascism seems a bit hyperbolic.

It's the fact that drug dogs at train stations unfairly target poor people and minorities for possession of personal quantities of drugs (traffickers don't take the train), despite rates of drug use being fairly consistent across socio-economic borders. Drug dogs are also generally also inaccurate and respond heavily to their handlers signals, and are therefore susceptible to their handlers biases. They're basically a tool for creating probable cause for a search (although in New South Wales, apparently refusal to consent to a search is also probable cause, go figure).

So yes, it's the dogs that make them fascist.

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