DC Metro not enforcing rules at this time

[Monello]

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

The bigger story to this is the shaming of the person that pointed out the rule breaker. Of course the race card was used early on. So now someone's livelyhood is at risk for pointing out someone not following the rules. This will become the norm now. Dallas won't prosecute certain thieves/shoplifters. Metro will look the other way when people eat, drink or play their music too loud.

Part 1 of the story:

an email from Metro Transit Police Chief Ron Pavlik sent May 8, ordering officers to “cease and desist from issuing criminal citations in the District of Columbia for fare evasion; eating; drinking; spitting, and playing musical instruments without headphones until further advised.”

So it's anything goes on the Metro. I can't wait for the day that they try to reimplement the previous rules.

Part 2 of the story: Subway rider sees a Metro employee breaking a rule(eating). She points it out to the employee and is told to mind her own beeswax. Then the firestorm begins. P.S., not sure why being of Jordanian ancestry is mentioned in the article. Not sure why the race of the Metro employee is mentioned either.

Author Natasha Tynes has ignited a firestorm on social media, where she criticized a black Metro employee for eating on the train and reported the woman to transit officials.

Tynes, a Jordanian-American writer and World Bank employee in Washington, tweeted a photo of the woman Friday, showing the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employee in uniform, eating on the Red Line. Tynes tagged the WMATA account, reporting that when she confronted the woman for breaking Metro rules, the woman replied, “worry about yourself.”

“When you’re on your morning commute & see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train,” Tynes tweeted. “I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope @wmata responds."

The backlash was swift on Twitter, where people have been calling out the self-described “minority writer” for publicly shaming a black woman and trying to get her into trouble.

In response to the incident, Rare Birds Books, a publishing house that was set to distribute Tynes’s upcoming novel, “They Called Me Wyatt,” has decided not to do so. The book is about a Jordanian student who is murdered and realizes that her “consciousness” has inhabited Wyatt, a 3-year-old boy with speech delays, according the synopsis.

Rare Birds Books said in a statement Friday that it had learned that the author “did something truly horrible today in tweeting a picture of a metro worker eating her breakfast on the train this morning and drawing attention to her employer. Black women face a constant barrage of this kind of inappropriate behavior directed toward them and a constant policing of their bodies.
“We think this is unacceptable and have no desire to be involved with anyone who thinks it’s acceptable to jeopardize a person’s safety and employment in this way.”

The company then urged Tynes’s publisher, California Coldblood, to cut ties with the author as well.

https://twitter.com/rgay/status/1126930389598007296

2 wrongs make a bigger wrong

 

[glhs837]

Company was wrong to pull book deal. Race was mentioned because we need to know the inter-sectional "oppression" score of the players. Black and Muslim sort of cancel out, both women, no edge there. Ah, but one is a published author, while the other is a blue collar worker, so she wins on being of a lower "class" than the other one. We have a winner. Oh, and nobody like someone who snitches to the boss. She made her feelings known to the Mtro worker, then went over her head, and that rubs people wrong. Between the class issue and the fact that she publicly put a small offense on public blast, she loses this hand.

 

[officeguy]

25 years ago, if you came to DC you were told 'Oh, you can use the metro, its sooo different from the NYC Subway. The trains run on time, its clean, nobody is allowed to eat, its safe, no panhandlers and they even have their own police to keep it that way' Yea things have changed. Now its just as filthy as the Subway, you have the same panhandlers going through the cars and there is a non-zero chance of getting stabbed.

 

[Grumpy]

Rode the metro back in March for the first time in a while, so many people were eating sandwiches/doughnuts/etc that I thought they had done away with the 'no food/drink' rules.

 

[TCROW]

I don't ride the Metro very often, but my experience is that these rules have always been loosely enforced at best. It seems a huge mistake to have put carpet down on the floor on a system like this. One look at, and you can tell the no food/drink rule is rarely observed; the thing is a damn mess and I bet the cure for cancer could be found in the fibers of that gnarly carpet. I haven't ridden any of the new 9000-series cars, but I wonder if they re-thought that carpet thing in those?

More generally, I don't know how this system is admired the world over as it seems to be. It was reportedly modeled after the Paris Metro system, but I don't see any similarities. The Metro has got to be the worst municipal transit system I've ever ridden. To be fair, it has always been at a disadvantage. It had to get designed into a city/region that was largely developed, so it had to be wedged into an infrastructure that already existed. Compare to Boston's T, NYC's subway, London's Tube, or Paris' Metro -- these were all developed long ago and those cities had a chance to form and grow around a new transit system. Metro had NIMBY-ism to deal with, think Georgetown. It rarely ever went very close to places you actually need to go. It's designed towards getting workers into work and home at night. It's reasonable for tourists as long as they recognize they won't be able to go far off the beaten path if that's their thing.

The one thing I do admire is the brutalist station architecture. It's a strangely beautiful design. Reminds me of a lot of old urban C&P/Bell Atlantic central offices in look.

 

[Grumpy]

I haven't ridden any of the new 9000-series cars, but I wonder if they re-thought that carpet thing in those?

No carpet in the new cars.

 

[Hijinx]

Black women face a constant barrage of this kind of inappropriate behavior directed toward them and a constant policing of their bodies.

Gee: I wonder why?
Is it because a. unproportional number of blacks are in prison because they cannot obey the law.?
Is it because we can no longer suspend black children from school for disciplinary problems because an unproportional amount of blacks in school have a disciplinary problem
Is it because black people ignore rules in greater proportion to other races?

My question is this why is it considered innappropriate to expect an employee to obey the rules.
Just because she is a black woman? Is it really shaming someone to expect them to follow the rules?

 

[BernieP]

yet DC city council is set to implement a program to give civilians the privilege to write parking tickets for violations they see on their block.
They will be asked to snap a picture of the offending vehicle and report it.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

Last time I rode DC Metro ..... 1991 got off at the Suitland Station. Has it changed much since then? Inquiring minds and all that. I'd say asking for a friend, but she's already left.

 

[glhs837]

yet DC city council is set to implement a program to give civilians the privilege to write parking tickets for violations they see on their block.
They will be asked to snap a picture of the offending vehicle and report it.

One makes money, one does not, Pretty simple. Officers cost a wad. Never issue enough citations to pay for themselves. Citizen enforcers? Free friken money.

 

[Grumpy]

Yesterday morning, on a local radio station, they had a union rep for the woman. He explained that ticketing had been suspended on May 8th for eating/drinking, loud music, spitting, etc and thus it was okay for the woman to eat on the Metro. So if the Metro police stop writing tickets, that means the law/or rules don't apply anymore?? Stupidity is rampant when it comes to anything that is DC.

 

[Hijinx]

When you have a specific population of unruly people it is easier to just stop trying to enforce the rules than to write tickets they probably will not pay anyway.

 

[awpitt]

I think Natasha Tynes could've addressed her complaint directly with METRO Rail instead of making a public spectacle of it by putting it on social media. At that point, if no action was taken, that would've been the time to go public with it. All too often, people want to run straight to social media instead of trying to handle a problem in a more civil or professional manner. That's the real problem and is most likely why Natasha Tynes lost her book deal.

 

[Kyle]

I wonder if they're gonna let this poor little guy back on the trains now...

 

[Chris0nllyn]

yet DC city council is set to implement a program to give civilians the privilege to write parking tickets for violations they see on their block.
They will be asked to snap a picture of the offending vehicle and report it.

They did, but it was a provision wrapped up in a larger, more sweeping, bill that won't likely pass.

 

[glhs837]

If not he can hang at my place.

 

[BernieP]

They did, but it was a provision wrapped up in a larger, more sweeping, bill that won't likely pass.

I think the story is the timing, the WMATA police chief telling his officers not to enforce any of the regulations and then the person who was blacklisted for confronting a WMATA employee for eating on a train all happened around the same time as DC city council announced the parking vigilante program. The, what could possibly go wrong with people given the power to tag parked vehicles for violations.

 

[Kyle]

The, what could possibly go wrong with people given the power to tag parked vehicles for violations.

I'll watch for all the ones with Hillary and Obama bumper stickers!

 

[Monello]

I think Natasha Tynes could've addressed her complaint directly with METRO Rail instead of making a public spectacle of it by putting it on social media. At that point, if no action was taken, that would've been the time to go public with it. All too often, people want to run straight to social media instead of trying to handle a problem in a more civil or professional manner. That's the real problem and is most likely why Natasha Tynes lost her book deal.

Ms. Tynes approached the offending employee, who promptly blew her off. I'm sure there was some finger wagging and head bobbing involved along with a rude reply. Had the eater just been a little less hostile, perhaps this never makes it to social media.

Reverse the races in this story and the eater becomes someone with white privilege. And no book deals are squashed. Goose, gander; not exactly.

Ms. Tynes' book deal is in jeopardy because the book company is caving to PC pressure. Trying to appear all righteous. Barack Obama unjustly accused police of acting improper by taking the place of Louis Gates when the police were called to Gates' home about a possible break in. He made it about race in taking the side of the suspected black perpetrator in this case. By the standards above, he should also lose any book deal(s).

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

I imaging at some point, another area of 10 square miles, of vacant land, somewhere in the good 'ol US of A, will be identified as the next location for a new said District, encompassing, that will be restricted for the sole purpose of Federal use, Federal Buildings and Federal employee housing only. Once a Federal employees retires, they would be required to move out. Commit a crime, forced to move out. Kinda like living on an Army base in the barracks, but different.