Seriously, my morning was terrifying. There were ZERO cops around and about forty kids jumped this dude and just kept hitting and kicking him. Guys jumped in and tried to stop it, but there were 4 times as many kids as adults on this section of the platform. It was terrible.
When it finally stopped, the guy’s bag had been stolen and he jumped back on the train and confronted this group of kids again. I was now stuck on a train with an angry dude and a bunch of kids perfectly willing to kick his ass. And he was bleeding. Awful.
Does Metro get sued in this situation? I reported the shit out of it when I got to Dupont, which no one else on my train seemed concerned with doing. The station manager was horrified and I watched as she called it in. But still, where were all the Metro cops?
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard about this happening, in fact it might be the fourth or fifth. And though it dulls in comparison I’ve been punched getting of the Metro at my stop by high schoolers who were crowding the door and blocking my way out.
Also—now that I think about it—I believe a kid was killed for bumping into another group of kids on a Metro bus in Silver Spring just last year. Obvisouly, this is a problem and no, I don’t know much about what Metro is doing to try and stop this, but I can’t say that it seems like much. However, I am the number 1 hater on WMATA right now…
This sort of shit scares me — when you have a city where most residents/commuters use the metro to get to work, you need to police it just like you police the cars on the road. I want to see tickets get handed to individuals for aggressive behavior just like I see people ticketed for aggressive driving, etc.
99% of the time, I am sooooooooo excited about moving to D.C.
Then I see stuff like this and I worry. Is this a D.C. thing? A U.S. thing. In any event, I’m concerned.
