Anxiety over BART crime, safety, and deplorable teens will surely be on the rise after yet another BART attack by a teen mob Thursday, this one at the Richmond station. The Chronicle reports that “five or six” teens attacked a man and kicked him in the head roughly before 11:30 a.m. Thursday morning. The unidentified victim remains hospitalized, and this incident is likely to increase concerns about BART’s crime problem as the station was unstaffed, and blood remained all over the station’s sidewalks for at least six hours.
"Teen kicked man in the head" outside BART Station" Richmond Mayor Tom Butt @kron4news pic.twitter.com/LtRGx33Zw6
— Haaziq Madyun (@KRON4HMadyun) July 21, 2017
What makes this attack unique is that none other than Richmond Mayor Tom Butt made the initial 911 call, as the mayor just happened to be at the Richmond BART station at the time. Butt lends some pretty scathing criticism to BART’s staffing and response on the matter.
“All I saw was several [of the teens] taking videos of something, then I saw the last one to leave kick the guy in the head,” Butt told the Richmond Standard. “They were run off by a brave woman screaming at them. A couple of other women were trying to help the guy. The victim was bloody and injured on the face and head.”
That victim remains hospitalized, but Butt’s more perturbed that there no was no station agent on duty at the time. Further, he said several BART employees were sitting nearby and “appeared uninterested” in the matter.
“I wonder if they even called 911,” the mayor said.
The teens fled prior to BART police arriving at about 11:26 a.m., according to KRON 4. In this case BART police argue that the attack occurred on the Richmond Police Department’s jurisdiction, perhaps foreshadowing a coming defense to future critiques of their responses.
And those critiques will come. Butt followed up six hours later to find there was still no station agent and the blood had still not been cleaned up.
BART Chief of Police Carlos Rojas tells KRON 4 that the system will be hiring more BART police officers, as robberies are up 45 percent on BART this year.
Related: BART Says They're Withholding Deplorable Teen Crime Videos To Prevent Racial Bias