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Muni Diaries just came out with this appalling account via the Noe Valley Voice about Noe Valley resident R. La Rose's encounter with an abusive teen on the J Church on the morning of April 1st.
Update I: The student was apparently identified and has apologized to La Rose, who is actually a man.
Update II: Wow, the plot thickens. SFist commenter ttulip says that s/he was a witness to the encounter and that La Rose initially handled the situation very inappropriately, yelling crude obscenities and trying to push the teen's legs off the seats. If that's the case, then they both are jerks.
The teen and her duffle bag were taking up three seats in the elderly/disabled section on a train that was packed to the gills, which included a group of fifteen 5- and 6-year-olds (good times!). La Rose politely asked the teen three times to move her bag so two other people could sit down. Here's an excerpt from her letter about what happened next:
I reached down to move her bag and when I did so, she stood up and very forcefully slapped me in the face, knocking off my glasses. I'm 60 years old and the surprise and force of her slap knocked me down. She then proceeded to curse at me, calling me a "f- -king bitch" and several other things. Several other passengers tried to calm her down. She continued to yell at me, and when she got off the streetcar at the Church and 18th Street stop, she spit in my face and on my jacket and cursed me again. I watched as she started to walk toward Mission High School on the other side of the street from the Muni stop, so I assume that she is a student there.
La Rose goes on to say that Muni should have extra security personnel to ensure the safety of its passengers, and providing additional trains during commuting hours would be a great help, of course. As SFist noted last month, SF cops are supposed to ride at least one bus per shift, but who has ever seen this occurrence?
We wonder if this should also be a responsibility of the school system as well. If they aren't providing school buses for their students, then maybe they need to include some sort of chaperones on lines that go to and from their schools. The Onion's Decider recently concluded that a revival of the Guardian Angels might be a more affordable solution.
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see MUNI should be using their Orwellian security cam/footage to catch that bitch and put the 'effin smack down on her.
but no. they won't.
it's gonna take some train driver, or passenger getting murdered on one of our trains for something to happen.
There was security cam footage. There were certainly witnesses. Did the victim file a police report and say she was prepared to press assault charges?
Yes, she reported it. Here's what she was told:
I wouldn't give up there.
Demand the security cam footage.
Print out a picture of the girl beating her up.
Post reward posters.
we really need a Rudy Giuliani-type to run this town for a good 8 years. crime would go down, the crackhead zones in places like the Tenderloin would shrink/disappear to be replaced by semi-functioning neighborhoods, and the trains would run on time (and be punk-ass free)
enough with the hugs-and-kisses shit - we can has real mayor now, yes, pleaz?
I have to agree with this.
I hate to admit it (I no likes Rudy Guiliani) but I agree as well.
No, we just need a mayor who is even remotely competent. Instead we get stuck with celebrity wannabes like Newsom and Willie.
New York City was sued, successfully, for civil rights violations (i.e., cops felt they had permission to hassle plus anyone with melanin in their skin) more often under Giuliani than at any time before or since. It made *some parts* of NYC safer, but at a real financial and social cost. There has to be a solution balanced between these extremes.
I don't see any long-lasting negative consequences of Rudy. Sure, the City had to pay up for those lawsuits, but its quite arguable that it was just the cost of doing business. (Corporate America does this all the time - if the downside of bending the rules is grossly exceeded by the upside, then bend the rules, pay the fine, and count your profits.)
Not to be cold, but if the costs of knocking heads (literally) to clean up the NYC subway and streets was some collateral damage, then so be it. I remember NYC in the pre-Rudy days. It was a great City turned into violent shithole. Hell, I remember taking the subway and there were these little sections marked off by yellow lines on the platform that had security cameras trained on them - THAT was what passed for safety. And there were some stations you just didn't get off at after a certain hour.
I grew up in the same NYC you did. I'm not saying it was all sunshine and farts growing up in Jamaica, but cops also becoming thugs didn't really make me feel safer, for whatever that may be worth.
Def. agree, but it will never happen. The new wealthy want mayors that entertain them and keep their neighborhoods white. Everything else is someone else's problem.
Can we have quiet competence (Bloomberg) rather than raving fascist (Giuliani) please? Thanks.
Hey, I'm a definitely a fan of Bloomberg over Rudy. By a mile. And Bloomberg and has not only maintained the crime reductions of Rudy but improved upon them incrementally - and without the fascism. BUT, I really think that you'd fist need a strong-armer like Rudy to first accomplish the big, hard changes before you can put in a technocrat like Bloomberg.
The instruments of government change slowly and you sometimes need an a-hole to get anything done.
if you know the facts/stats/history (and there was a terrific article about this in Harpers around the time Rudy G was running for president) most of the crime reductions actually began under Dinkins and continued through Rudy. All Guiliani did was add an exciting and illegal racial aspect to the whole thing.
C'mon, no other riders jumped up and restrained that bat shit little girl who thinks its okay to hit people? I would have had her kissing the floor of that MUNI train until police came.
The woman said, "several other passengers tried to calm her down," which does sound a bit wimpy to me. It could be that the train was so crowded/chaotic that many people couldn't tell what was happening.
Nail meets head. Maybe on Rincon Hill the teens don't carry street gats, but sadly out here in the rest of SF, you never know what sort of weapon a kid has on them.
Is it worth getting shot over? That's the question I ask before I intervene in anything. Because usually, it's not. (I guess I've seen too many movies).
that plus people are pretty scared these days of just not knowing whether or not some 16-yr old kid has a "friday night special" jus chillin in the hoodie they have on.
this is an unfortunate occurrence, but we can't have armed guards at the ready everywhere people congregate. or at least, I hope that never happens.
The kid is a punk.
Typical teen thug of the ghetto. No description of the kid so they could identify her at the school?
This kind of stuff isn't new. It's been like this here for decades.
More than one time I've seen police ride transit, and they typically note the time and line in their logs.
Correction & Update: This incident occurred between a Mission High student and 60-year-gentalmen. The student was identified and issued an apology to Mr. La Rose.
How nice, an apology. Not sure I would have been satisfied with that.
Oy. What about the punk-assed kid's parents? Clearly they have done us all a grave injustice by raising the rude girl and setting her loose on public transit. Perhaps they owe Mr. La Rose a big fat apology.
Yesterday riding the J-Church a handful of teens just were tagging up the second car with markers. It was obvious they had started before I got on. I (30 y/o male) was amazed that the dozen or so people around them just said nothing. I told one of the kids to knock it off. Maybe not the wisest move. They kept doing it so I told the MUNI driver. He kicked them off, and then security came on a few stops later and said something like "not enough graffiti to stop the train". Maybe it wasn't so smart for me to open my big mouth, but I teach high schoolers so maybe I'm a little more....used to it?
Sadly, I was there. What seems to be missing from the account is that the man was yelling crude obscenities at the teen and pulled the her legs off of the seats which initally escalated the exchange.
Myself and the passengers around me couldn't believe he would do that to a young woman, no matter how haughty she was. She responded so inappropriately that it just became a total mess.
Many people ignored what was happening, and looked at their iPhones and it was also very crowded. Some did try to minimally restrain the girl, but I think no one whole-heartedly jumped in to help him b/c he was initially so disrespectful to her. The story was just not as black and white as portrayed.
The worst part was seeing the young children going on a fieldtrip with their moms...ugh, the whole thing was ugly.
Funny how he left that part out. Definitely erodes my sympathy.
Wow, thanks for the great update. I've added it to the post. It goes to show that there's always two sides to a story.
Thanks, ttulip. Sounds like the man may have deserved to be called a Bitch after all.
Actually this isn't totally true either. I was there as well and basically both sides handled it badly. First off there was a ton of small children on some kind of field trip on the train, all of them standing while this girl did her homework. She had laid her large bag over the remaining seats refusing to budge after being asked twice by others and even after having a few of the kids actually fall into her as the train lurched around.
When La Rose came on he did ask her several times nicely but the girl refused to move and it went downhill from there. If he felt like he needed to make more out of it he should have gotten the conductor involved - although I give him credit for at least trying. The train was super crowded. His first mistake was trying to physically move her bag when she refused to budge. She of course lost it on him and started yelling obscenities as they wrestled with the bag and she then put her legs in the seats. He then touched her and tried to move her legs. That's when she slapped him. Meanwhile the kids were screaming and the chaperons where trying to move them out of the way at the same time telling them to "close your ears."
In my opinion they were both out of line, and any grown man should know better then to touch a minor in any way regardless if she was foul-mouth, rude, and completely selfish (which she was). Although the spitting certainly put her over the top and into the despicable slot and he certainly didn't deserve that.
I'd be interested to know if the first part was as he described, what with her taking up the seats and telling him to "Fuck off" etc as he repeatedly asked her to move, prior to him cursing at her and pulling her legs off the seat, or if he leapt to those tactics right away.
Right after they started the policy, I did see cops on the bus but not lately.