Now that this thread has veered off to cover dangerous cops in general, I'm kind of surprised nobody has brought up 21 year old Victoria Snelgrove. Innocent Red Sox fan in the wrong place at the wrong time, shot through the eyeball with a pepper spray pellet by cops trying to disperse a crowd last week. Pellet lodged in her brain and killed her.

Pepper spray pellets should not be fired at eye level anyway, so there was very probably misuse on the part of the cops. That's assuming that pepper spray was warranted in the first place - I think that ready availablilty of "nonlethal" police weaponry likely increases the chances that the cops will resort to force.

What's wrong with tear gas for large crowds in small spaces? Aside from the actual cannisters, there's no need for projectiles of any kind. You just need to be upwind.

Yeah, but they didn't use canisters in this instance. They used pellets full of tear gas.

And I read an account of one of the people there who said the cops were giving conflicting instructions to the crowd. They were being herded in one direction by mounted officers and at the same time told to disperse by other officers. The second group of officers opened fire with pellets, but there was nowhere for the crowd to go, since they were surrounded by mounted cops. Several people were injured, and one died. Many of them were innocent bystanders just trying to get home from the game.

That seems to match the tactics (or, hopefully, lack thereof) used in New York at the convention. Is this something that is being taught by roving police trainers?

Back to the Washington Metrorail situation.

These guys need money. They have systems that are breaking down, cars with bad brakes, and undertrained new drivers. Some unknown combination of the three caused a spectacular train crash yesterday.

Let's see, we had Bush win the election, subway trains smashing into each other, the Prince George's county courthouse go up in smoke, and John Edward's wife get diagnosed with cancer, all on the same day Bush won. What was lookout123 saying about the sky not falling after the election?

This train, which was empty except for its inexperienced driver, somehow lost its brakes and rolled backwards down a hill in the tunnel, gathering speed, until it smashed into the train full of passengers waiting at the platform. Two seperate fail-safe saftey devices were supposed to stop it from rolling backwards. I guess they aren't so fail-safe.

The passengers ran screaming from the parked train just before the collision, and nobody was killed. 20 people were injured though, including the driver of the hit train. That driver probably saved the day, because he saw the train coming fast and told everyone to get off his train.

This is the picture today. The blue tarps are there to calm the passengers using the train on the opposite side. But you can see the whole mess when you enter the station and go down the escalators.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/4...fe750000001610

Tacking on "Adams Morgan" to that station was really dumb...Columbia Heights is way closer to Adams Morgan than Woodley Park.

The funny thing is, the delays and crowds on that side of the Red Line are so notorious that the regular Red Line users would hardly notice a difference. Biggest difference now is there's a great big mess sitting in the station on the other track.