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Jul 9, 2014 at 7:17 pm
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
The guy broke the law by stealing a ride and having a stolen gun in his possession. He sealed the deal by pulling it on the cop. All for a lousy $2.50
Regarding his cousin, it's too bad that his poor choices caused his death, and continue to cause his family pain. Thank goodness both the deputy and the fare officer weren't shot by this violent felon.
At 3:55 he gets his right arm free
At 3:56 he reaches behind his back
By 3:58 he is now holding something in his right hand
By 4:00 you have seen flashes of what looks like a gun, which the other officers try to wrestle out of his hand.
He was a role model according to his mother.
And, of course, you side with the armed piece of shit criminals.
I saw the video, sad, but the kid got what he was asking for.
Ansel. Clearly.
@7 is right - don't be a scofflaw if you're violating parole.
He pulled a gun on them, they saw the threat, they neutralized it.
Since it was 2 on 1, could they have done so without killing him? Possibly. But, if they failed to neutralize the threat without killing him, and one of them died, or somebody else got shot, they also would have been in the wrong.
This one is definitely no fun.
"How do you catch a murderer? 2 weeks later when he jumps a turnstile."
The victim in this case may well have "paid" by swiping his ORCA card as required, but was simply unwilling to hand over arbitrary information on that card to the people who boarded the train to investigate everyone on it.
I fear for my own safety when I am someday confronted by a government employee on an "honor system" train does not honor my word that I paid when he comes around to investigate everyone on the train. I believe strongly in the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Leave me alone to go about my business unless you've reason to suspect me of wrongdoing. My standing on a train refraining from talking to a guy in a Sound Transit jacket is not reason to suspect me of wrongdoing.
really preschool level stuff here.
you're the type of person who shuns credit cards in favor of cash-only operations, aren't you?
The back of my Orca card says "Cards may be inspected on demand."
@28: Paper tickets for Sound Transit trains are not, as far as I know, ever collected, stamped, hole-punched, as evidence that they have been redeemed for travel. How would transit staff know whether or not a ticket I purchased had been redeemed for the trip on which I boarded or were destined for use tomorrow or next week?
If we're going to use the honor system, we need to trust people's honor. If not, we need to A) have staff or devices at station or vehicle entrances prohibit people from entering until they provide cash or a ticket, or B) have train conductors come around to accept cash or collect/stamp/hole-punch tickets after people board, ejecting those who do not pay or provide a ticket.
In the United States, people are supposed to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. It is inappropriate---likely unconstitutional---for agents of our government to go around and investigating everyone and treating silence as indication of guilt.
Personally, I think there should be more armed transit police riding buses, trains, and light rail keeping them safe for commuters and enforcing policies that the drivers seem hesitant to do (eating, using more than one seat, etc).
Also, will all those protesters being submitting payment now for the fares that they screwed transit out of? Transit sure could use the the that money these days.
As has been pointed out many times, they work in pairs (sometimes 3) and begin at each end of the car checking every rider in sequence. Not selecting some and overlooking others, no "profiling" whatsoever.
To be legal, you scan your ORCA card and the reader beeps at you to tell you your fare is valid; hell the screen even lights up with that message in words. You can buy your ORCA card with cash; no ID required.
Or use cash to buy a paper ticket that's time-stamped and good for a couple hours of riding. No ID required.
One of our commenters tonight has gone completely around the bend, creating the illusion of a problem out of whole cloth.
FWIW, I have seen "profiling" on the Portland light rail. The fare enforcement officers targeted a couple kids who they had reason to believe hadn't paid the fare and then checked a couple others on the car, me included, so it was "fair".
It's OK to disown a relative who is a violent criminal. And it's mandatory to respect the rule of law in this country - you can't just ignore the law until it's time to abandon the ruins for another country.
You sure do have a loooong memory!
The video shows a different story; and I can almost hear the disappointment from the sloggers.
Even the biggest libtarded social justice gun grabber dummies here agree, you pull a gun on a cop, you get shot.
I am sorry you're so confused because your cousin is dead, but he made that decision the second he tried to shoot someone.
Everyone here is sorry that your cousin is dead, but that was his own fault ... not that of anyone else here.
Oh yeah ... if you are here illegally ... then you deserve to get caught if you chose to flaunt the laws/rules.
That's a false comparison. You're probably thinking of the transit systems in which a conductor comes through a train to collect fares. With those systems, one either pays the conductor cash or redeems a ticket purchased earlier. The trade of either cash or a ticket happens on the train, not outside in the station or on the platform. New Jersey Transit, for instance, does that. Sound Transit doesn't do that.
Here, the transaction happens outside, before boarding. We trust people to perform this action prior to boarding, largely because we saved the expense of turnstiles or fare-collecting conductors. It's called--by Sound Transit--an honor system. But then, well after this transaction has happened and people board the train, Sound Transit sends staff around to investigate about 10% of riders for suspicion of non-payment, requiring everyone they investigate to convince staff that those riders paid under threat of ejection and police involvement. Those people in the faux-WSP uniforms are not conductors; they are security guards. They have no reason to suspect those people of wrongdoing. If they did, they should and likely would call the police.
If I am on a train, minding my own business, and I have paid the fare, and our government agents have no reason to suspect that I have not paid the fare or committed other wrondoing, they should leave me alone to go about my lawful business.
Wrong. Example: New Jersey Transit, where conductors collect fares on the train. Another: Chicago Transit Authority, where fares are collected my machines that allow someone to pass through a gate (a "turnstile") only after collection of fare.
"Amtrak also has conductors that will check tickets."
Sort of. Amtrak's system is in a bizarre state of flux. Not too many years ago, conductors collected fares on trains after departure. They've been airportifying their system in recent years, seemingly transitioning to a system whereby a person who purchased a ticket rather than the bearer of a ticket is authorized for carriage, with staff examining tickets outside the station as if they were boarding passes.
Ansel's coverage of the fare protest was certainly sympathetic to the protestors, but they were actually there protesting.
Ironically enough, New Jersey transit uses exactly the same fare check system on their light rail system that ST does on LINK. Again, contrary to your assertions,such a system is not unlawful. There is a very simple solution if you do not want to go through a fare check: don't ever ride LINK.
P.S.: you suck at HTML tagging.
The fare enforcement officers come on the train and check everyone's payment. I show them the ticket I bought and they move on to the next passenger.
If this process is enough to set you into conniptions, how in the everliving fuck do you manager to negotiate the world at large?
I'm sorry for your loss.
In fact the so called "protestors" are still in steadfast denial of the evidence of their own eyes.
What do you want to bet the family will attempt a civil suit against Sound Transit and the City. Let's lay odds.
And that first article wasn't merely sympathetic to the "protestors," it was obsequious fawning.
Ansel immediately compares the shooting to Oscar Grant III. When other than happening on planet earth near train tracks there is little comparison.
An actual reporter would have found out that the deceased was a convicted felon of a violent crime, for instance. And that he AND his companion were both illegally carrying concealed handguns.
Instead he has this ridiculous spin that the shooting had something to do with "how authorities collect fares." They check EVERYBODY'S ticket.
BTW. Why hasn't the Stranger asked where and how these kids got their guns?
Presumably the cops have the gun as evidence, though it's easy enough to plant one after the fact, but the video seems pretty damning. Ask yourself what it would take for you to believe your cousin was carrying an illegal gun and pulled it on the cops. If nothing at all would convince you, then you're a fool and we're done here. If you're just skeptical of a blurry video and await further evidence I can totally understand that. Keep on supporting him until more evidence is in, but from what I've seen it's unlikely that he will be shown to be innocent.
As for his immigration status, I couldn't give half a shit. We need to overhaul our immigration system and find a better way to bring in workers to do the jobs so many consider themselves above but we need to do it in a way that doesn't lock those immigrants into a life of indentured servitude and poverty level wages. If he had an Orca card and had paid his fare then none of this would have happened. It seems a series of mistakes on his part led to his death. It's sad that he chose that path.
Or, if you're too paranoid to show them your ticket you can just drive. Just be prepared that when a cop pulls you over he's going to ask for proof of insurance and registration (presumption of innocence notwithstanding) which gives him a lot more information than your ticket ever could.
You're not from the Seattle area, are you?
If in fact she family, then give her some room to vent, though I would point out to @43 that if you are listening, really, no one here cares much about his immigration status or ethnicity; he could have been a white guy from Medina and we'd say the same thing.
This time, total silence, because he jumped the gun so blatantly and now should be retracting his earlier posts.
But he won't, of course. What an embarrassment.
Subtlety may not be your strong suit. Linking to the previous post and quoting the cousin are pretty strong forms of commentary.
Sound hard and cruel? It is is NOT. THINK what they were doing with their lives; robbing and killing.
This POS made the choice to kill some one for $2.00 and instead paid a justifiable price.
Another non PC comment is WTF is going on with that female officer; her back to this POS friend and not watching him and lets him go around her while she is holding her ears and puts hands on the officers? Again WTF... Women; a majority of them are not suited to patrol law enforcement; personally I have never ever seen any put hands on a subject; they just dance around the perimeter of the dog pile and act like some sort of referee..
Okay, I see.
@83
And you love it.
I'm also getting more and more angry about the reporting on this story.
1. To imply that the light rail fare checkers are anything but even-handed in their duties is absurd. It's clear that the author has not spent any time on light rail and did not ask the opinion of anyone who has ridden light rail about such things.
2. In an incident like this you have two people at the very least that you should do some basic research on: the officer and the guy who got shot. It's evident that this was not done. You'd think that a reporter would cover these bases.
It sucks to be disappointed like this with The Stranger.
You did not, Ansel. You wrote about the protest in detail. There's no way you could've written about the incident itself, not unless you had a Harry Potter Seer Orb at your disposal.
The U.S. and Canada belong to their respective citizens. Coerced or not, the indigenous peoples who inhabited North America prior to European settlement entered into legally-binding treaties with the United States and Canada, nation-states which today are fully recognized under international law.
@43. Your cousin is a loser and a criminal. Basically just a thug. And to pull Native-American racism card really? You bring up that you are Latino. Who cares? There are plenty of illegals from hundreds of countries living in the U.S. Why do you and so many other Latino's feel that Latino's are the only ones who are illegally here? Are you racist against the Asians, Europeans and Middle Easterners living here illegal?
Having had a family member murdered by someone here illegally, his legal status DOES MATTER. My family member would still be alive if the ILLEGAL ALIEN had been deported like he was suppose to be when he killed her. In this instance, your cousin would be alive as well because he wouldn't have been here in this situation in the first place. Then again, he probably would have just been a thug in whatever country he was deported to as well. Open your eyes. He wasn't a good person and he was a drain on society. Thank you to all the cops and public safety personnel out there for what you do and for getting this loser off the streets even though it was in a body bag due to his own actions.