BART cop/drunk guy incident
Wow. Just wow. What do you think about what we’re seeing here? Let us know in comments.
Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Wow. Just wow. What do you think about what we’re seeing here? Let us know in comments.
Looks like Drunkie’s arm went through the glass. It’s weird that it shattered so easily, though. You’d think that train station windows would be made of something more durable.
It broke like movie glass
Apparently, this was the same old plate glass that had originally been installed in the
West Oakland Station when it first opened, like, 37 years ago, before they eventually realized they needed to have shatter-resistant and earthquake-safe glass windows in all the stations – and also, apparently, West Oakland Station was on the waiting list / agenda for replacement glass but it was to be a while before they got around to it…
Just a thought: “Drunkie” was not only just drunk, but also had severe mental illness issues – he had apparently just recently spent time in the Alameda County Mental Health Facility ( “John George Hsopital” in San Leandro ) but he hadn’t been kept there very long –
as a matter of course, patients ( or “inmates” ) are never kept there very long, no matter what kind of a state they are in when they come in…
After he was released, it appears he was still in the “hyper-manic” state of his Bi-Polar Disorder, which can cause the sufferer of the illness to act wildly, irrationally, impulsively, even violently & the condition can only get worse with the added influence of alcohol…
It also seems like the authorities should have kept him longer ( for observation, if nothing else, or to be reccomended over to some other mental health facility, after he had kicked that 92-year old man over on SAMTRANS…
It also would have been much better if there could have been more BART Police sent to handle the situation – if there were several BART Policemen that had arrived on the scene, they could have surrounded the guy and more or less quietly handled the situation –
like, two officers could have distracted him while two others subdued him from behind…
Of course, in the state this guy was in, his behavior might have been unpredictable, but it still seems like it would have been better to have more officers at the scene
( just as long as that didn’t result in another Oscar Grant -type tragedy )…
As it was, however, only one officer arrived with the sense that something drastic had to immediately be done, and he just yanked the guy off the train & dragged him across the platform, which resulted in the accident, & then the subsequent bad press for BART &
the BART Police, as when upon seeing the video & hearing the first reports, people jumped to the conclusion that the officer had “manhandled” the trouble-maker, “roughed him up” and pushed his head through the window…
To me it definitely looks like the suspect shoved his hand against (and then through) the window, probably not thinking it would break but instead seeing it as something to stop him from moving, just like you would put your hands in front of you before you fall down.