BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
These flash mob robberies are quite common on the east coast. I've heard about a number of them in Philadelphia on reddit where a group of 'youths' shows up and attacks people.
It's a surprisingly little reported on phenomenon. Yet it sounds quite psychologically jarring.
Since the license is may-issue, it depends on the LEO you apply to. I was denied one on almost exactly these grounds. I told my local police chief that my business took me to high crime areas in San Francisco, and he said that wasn't good enough, and that I'd have to have evidence of a specific threat to my specific life to be considered for one.
There's situations where concealed carry could help but I'm not sure if this case is one of them.
Does any transit have actual security we give them millions per year where I live and there's not a visible cop in sight ever unless they are parked in front of a busy station handing out fines.
You should be taking the course of action that's most likely to lead to the best outcomes. If it's one-on-60, it's not clear to me that fighting back is that course of action. (I really don't know what is best in that situation.)
Long straight lines, plenty of bodies in a row, ~10-15 rounds, and you could probably cut that 60 number down into the 40's surprisingly quickly. Depends on how crowded the train is in general though.
I hope that if I'm ever in the subway and it's robbed that you are not in the same car, same for any other dirty Harry wannabe's. Better to hand over my wallet and cell phone than to end up with a bullet from a well meaning bystander.
http://americablog.com/2013/02/vigilante-walmart-shopper-ope...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3252074/Police-looki... (uk)
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/264755/carjacking-gone-wrong...
http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/10/vigilantes...
How many links do you want?
Those were much less complex situations.
And you think putting all that in a crowded subway car is going to improve matters?
>How many links do you want?
Just 1, but this time to statistics. I didn't suggest no one has ever been hit accidentally in a defensive shooting, just that it's incredibly rare compared to the amount of times guns are used in self defense, and not worth fear mongering about by suggesting concealed carriers are dirty Harry wannabe's.
Ever been in a situation where someone shoots at someone else? Ever been in a bar when you start hearing shots fired?
All it would take would be one gunshot and one person hitting the deck and it would be chaos. As soon as someone pulls a gun, people GTFO of that area. They don't continue to mind their own business or continue to try and rob someone, they're too busy trying to flee the scene and get to safety.
source: I've been in a packed bar twice when someone has pulled a handgun and started firing.
It's ideal for deterring if you can draw before they enter. It's ideal for gunning down attackers (and, if you aren't an excellent shot, bystanders) in great number if you draw once they are on the train, but successful deterrence in that case requires no one to panic and fight when confronted in a crowded situation with limited exits, which is highly unreliable.
You seem to be thinking that mobs are rational, so that an optimal killing ground is also an optimal deterrence setting.
However, I do want to make it clear that if you draw your concealed firearm, you do it with the intent to use it, not to brandish it as a form of deterrence. If there is any option on the table to avoid drawing, then you leave it in the holster.
That leads me to say: sweeping this kind of crime under the rug will not help. Instead, it will lead to a repeat of the Goetz vigilante incident in NYC in the early 1980s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...
http://nypost.com/2011/12/23/one-of-bernhard-goetzs-victims-...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-feldman/bernie-goetz-t...
That last link in particular contains a stunning statement:
> The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically — so much so the authorities even held back the numbers — the truth hurt too much.
The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works. Please note I hate the idea of vigilantism and hope with every fiber of my being that things do not come to that, but it at first glance appears that things are headed in that direction, which I am immensely sad and scared to see.
[ citation needed ]
I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back you up. I've wasted my life.
That's a quote from me, not from the HuffPo article. The article says "The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically…", as I quoted originally.
> I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back you up. I've wasted my life.
I replied to you here with a source that only took a few minutes to find:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189548
You seem very emotional about this topic. I would urge you to look at it more dispassionately. As I already stated (but it bears repeating), I absolutely do not want vigilantism to be the result of crimes like this, but I fear unless there is an open and honest conversation, things may end up there anyway. I believe the best (and perhaps only) way to avoid such an outcome is to consider the possibilities that may result from various actions (or inactions), unpleasant as they may be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/sogfeld-774
Somehow info from BART officials made it to the various news outlets. The news outlets wrote stories on it. I knew about the incident by Sunday. I read about it somewhere. I was not on the train.
BART didn't pretend the robbery didn't happen.
"Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/522fc0aee4b06bf96fa60...
> Our empirical approach traces the sources of recent self-defense groups to the early twentieth cen- tury Cristero rebellion and, using an instrumental variables approach, we show that contemporary community mobilization has succeeded in reducing a broad range of crimes.
Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news). Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page? My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic, until they can't any more (that's usually when something really bad happens). Note again that I am very unhappy with that idea and wish it were not so, but it strikes me as unfortunately very likely. I'd love to be wrong, but I see nothing to indicate otherwise. There is always hope I suppose.
Go read the 1,000 articles Richard Feldman wrote for the NRA and his own gun lobbying group.
> "Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"
Comparing current conditions in America with the Cristero Rebellion or the Mexico drug war is odd. I argue we're not there yet.
What I really wanted from you is evidence that Goetz shooting people on the NYC subway resulted in lower crime rates.
> Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news).
You were claiming BART was deliberately not informing the public about the robbery incident, just like Richard Feldman was claiming that the NYC subway system was deliberately not informing riders that crime plummeted because of the Goetz shooting.
I argue that BART was not withholding details of the shooting. As evidence of this, I maintain that there are tons of newspaper articles about the robbery out there. If BART was suppressing the incident, they're not doing a very good job of it.
> Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page?
No I don't pay attention.
> My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic
We're all talking about it!
crime rates are at 40 year lows and trending down
I notice that several people are responding to me as though I am advocating vigilantism even though I am doing the opposite, so I feel I must reiterate once again that I am fully opposed to it. Instead, I am trying to raise the alarm that if highly visible crimes like the one described in this article are not addressed sufficiently, the public may react with vigilantism. That is an outcome I want to avoid.
Does anyone have info on the law here? Pictures that include minors in them are shared all the time over the internet and media - many times without having permission from all the people pictured - which I believe is still legal. Why is sharing a picture of a minor illegal in this instance?
Innocent until proven guilty, and once the images get out, they are automatically guilty in the eyes of the public. Should any minor get their record sealed when they turn 18, they would still be known to have committed those crimes.
As they have not been apprehended the suspects, it is unknown if they would be tried as an adult. The new outlet is erring on the side of caution here because if the case where a suspect is tried as a minor, gets their record sealed at 18, and will be liable for slandering the adult's name with a crime he or she committed as a juvenile.
Wait, what? Are you saying that the Right to Be Forgotten already exists in the U.S. with respect to criminal convictions of minors?
This has nothing to do with limits on people in general sharing video or images of minors.
Really? If you're old enough to rob a train, you should be old enough to have a wanted poster.
Some of the cameras on BART trains are dummies. After an embarrassment last year, BART has been replacing the dummies with real ones. Completion is scheduled for July 1, 2017.
It makes more sense if you look at it as a territorial dominance display. "They" are in "our" territory so we're going to assault and humiliate them.
In all seriousness though, as a daily BART commuter, I hope this doesn't become a trend. I don't think there's any reason to panic just yet -- I feel a lot safer inside of a BART car than on the freeway.
If I don't see a gun or a knife and some kid walks up to me and says "Hand me your wallet and iPhone", I'd simply tell the 'teen' "Yeah, let me see you take it."
https://np.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/6711kb/bart_theftcr...
One would think you Trump voters would have gotten a clue by now.
On the other hand, they're threatening the lives of random innocent people over something as trivial as a phone, so why should we value their lives particularly highly?
Why are you singling out rich people that drive drunk?
By your reasoning, we should give less value to their lives.
How might we act on that lower valuation? We might demonstrate that we don't value a mugger's life very highly by shooting him in the act. How would we demonstrate that we don't value a drunk driver's life very highly? Shoot the car with a rocket launcher?
Because they're threatening the lives of random innocent people over something as trivial as a their easiness to avoid problems with the law.
> How would we demonstrate that we don't value a drunk driver's life very highly?
Putting them on jail the same way we do with people that steal iphones. I mean Literally the same way, with a lot of punches and armlocks.
You're suggesting that rich people commonly drive drunk solely because they get some kind of thrill out of endangering the lives of innocent people and being able to get out of the consequences more easily than other people?
Putting them on jail the same way we do with people that steal iphones. I mean Literally the same way, with a lot of punches and armlocks.
We're not talking about what happens to them after they no longer pose a threat to innocent people. The purpose of shooting a mugger is not to punish the mugger, it's to prevent harm from coming to you.
Of course a phone is not worth a life. That is not what this is about.
How do you know GP voted for Trump? Why jump to that conclusion and why is that relevant in this case? Gary Johnson had just as a "liberal" gun control agenda as Trump perhaps...
That's the interesting thing there. I mentioned the other day about how irrationality is getting out of hand. It seems like people try too hard, go overboard and then hurt their own cause. "Everyone I don't like is a Trump supporter" is not a great way to win arguments or advance your agenda. It seems cathartic, and that's nice, but that's about it. After that is just discredits your argument.
When you have such stark financial and class inequality in a dense urban environment like the bay, being mugged of your iPhone occasionally is literally seen as a kind of moral tax that you pay for your gentrifying presence. To defend yourself from it would be politically incorrect, both individually to the "victim" of your self-defense, and to your class as a whole, as you should essentially accept the mugging as a tax on your privileged position in the cultural landscape.
I know many tech workers who live/lived in Oakland who have been mugged (including pistol-whippings), who essentially just accepted it. Some did not even report it to the police, as in their world-view, to do so would be to enlisting an inherently oppressive, violent and racist force.
Seriously, how do selfish, cowardly, sociopaths like yourself continue to operate in this world. The last people on Earth thst should be given weapons are people like you.
That's the robber's call to make, not yours.
I didn't once advocate for, or even once mention, guns in this situation (obviously shooting at a crowd of people on a busy train is an absolutely terrible idea for a whopping number of reasons) - but now I - a person you have never interacted with previously - am a "selfish, cowardly sociopath" for simply explaining the attitude that accepts the fact that, as you put it, "robbery happens", that it is better to let 50 teenage gang members assault and rob a train full of passengers than to threaten a single one of them.
In fact, I never even actually disagreed with you! I'm just trying to explain to any other Europeans reading this the context of how your comments could possibly make sense, because outside of the Bay Area bubble, they seem quite shockingly absurd.
I'd take one dude with an iPhone over an arbitrary number of people who premeditate assault and theft.