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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)

#91

Post by jblow »

closeparen wrote: post #59
School-Cotton wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#92

Post by new299 »

nradov wrote: post #79

The HN demographic skews male, and I suspect a lot of the men who are big fans of public transport here fail to appreciate how unsafe many women feel on those systems.

Yes. There’s a reason that Japan created a new term “Chikan” to describe gropers on trains. It’s exceedingly common. Recent reports, suggest that almost every woman who has used a underground in Japan regularly has been groped at some point.

I asked the women in Japan who I know well enough, and they confirmed this.

Japan tries to combat this with female only carriages.

I was recently talking to a woman in the US about this, she suggested that it was also quite common in the US. So perhaps, there’s just a more public discussion about this in Japan.

I’d love to see statistics on this, if anyone has them.

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

#93

Post by Bud »

closeparen wrote: post #71
Bud wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Sources on when "we" decided that and on the actual reduction in numbers of police, please.

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

#94

Post by ryanmonroe »

linksnapzz wrote: post #81
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…

There’s no political group supporting these robbers Sure there are. I know how to easily identify them, too. If, perchance, one of the robbers is shot and killed while committing an armed robbery, look to see which groups are more concerned about punishing the shooter than blaming the criminal. Insofar as this is California, it will be a substantial list.

For all of the protests against police shootings / killings I know of, the protests were due to the fact that the criminal was unarmed and didn't actually pose a threat. Is there really a large political movement against shooting armed criminals?

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

#95

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

True, but a plaintiff's lawyer has an incentive to overstate the problem on the client's behalf. It's irresponsible journalism to just quot this and attribute it to 'lawyer' (a stereo typically responsible person) without mentioning the adversarial context in which the remark is made. 'Plaintiff alleges BART 'a free-for-all' for Criminals' would have been better.

The attorney's duty is to maximize the perceived level of risk, just as it is the defense lawyer's job to dispute that. The article only mentions a single statistic showing a 28% increase in crime in the first 6 months of 2018. One hopes the complaint is more statistically rigorous.

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

#97

Post by refurb »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #80
rdtsc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I see your point about drug dogs on trains adversely impacting poor people, but what does that have to do with fascism?

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

#98

Post by theNJR »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #88

I'm sure that some other people have run into this scam on BART but I had it happen a few years ago. Right before the doors close at the SFO BART stop headed to Milbrae, a guy runs on all out of breath yelling and pleading for money to get a ticket for his sick daughter. He's a war vet and needs to get her to the hospital in Travis but they won't let her on the plane for some reason etc...Does this till the Milbrae s…

Ha, I had a guy similar to this today on the SFO airtram going from the rental car drop off to the terminal. He got on at International A and got off at the next stop.

Like your guy, he was pleading for money for his daughter. He had a very long back story, including the fact that a police officer already gave him $17 (and referred to the cop by name). Lots of unnecessary detail like that, trying to make it seem more plausible.

Everyone ignored him. He got off then jumped on the train going the opposite direction.

I wonder how much he makes a day.

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

#99

Post by closeparen »

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.

Yep. In many ways we are simply stuck with whatever we built before we lost the ability to build things. Not because it’s the best, but because it’s no longer cost effective to improve at current efficiency levels.

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

#100

Post by burtonator »

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…

> This is why it's hard to get support for public transit funding

My fiance and I took the BART two stops to get to civic center to the Trump protests about 2 weeks ago.

We saw people selling meth/heroin/etc literally INSIDE the BART station in the public... No one cared. No police around.

This happened 2-3 times. We were on for TWO stops.

Seriously... BART needs to clean up their fucking act. I associate BART with homeless people, BO, trash, vomit, fights, and getting robbed.

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