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Originally Posted by richlevy
Considering other notable arrests were a handicapped guy and a 12-year-old girl, I'd say these guys are pretty smart in picking their opponents.
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As someone who rides Metrorail every day, I wish that the cops would enforce the law more than they currently do.
Normally when a person violates the law by eating or drinking on Metro, they are warned to stop immediately. The cops also have the authority to ticket them without a warning if they want to. But arrests are extremely rare.
With the twelve year old girl travelling home from school, department policy stated that a ticket couldn't be issued to a minor, so the officer's only option was to arrest the minor or look the other way as the law was being broken. The officer arrested the minor, brought her to the station, and called her parent. It wasn't the officer's fault. Those were the official procedures at the time. They have since been modified.
I don't know the story of the handicapped man, but the article you quote says that he received a ticket for disturbing the peace. He was not arrested. He just has to pay a fine.
With the adult who was eating in the Metro before being arrested, she became verbally abusive to the cop as the cop tried to get her to stop eating. She also continued to eat after the cop told her she was violating the law. She was arrested because of the way she dealt with the cop. She lost in court, by the way, so the cop was vindicated.
The pregnant woman who was screaming obscenities on her cell phone in the metro was clearly disturbing the peace. She was first given a warning by the cop and asked to lower her voice and stop swearing. She instead started yelling and swearing at the cop. At that point she was only guilty of disturbing the peace. After ignoring the warning, the cop had a choice of ticketing her or arresting her. The fact that she was continuing the disturb the peace, even after the cop talked to her, made her arrest almost certain. When the cop tried to cuff her, she resisited, so she got put down on the ground. That's when resisiting arrest was added to the charges. The DA supposedly dropped the case because they didn't want to spend the money on a jury trial, but it was really dropped because it was a political hot potato. I wish they hadn't dropped the case. A jury decision would tell us a lot more about who was right and who was wrong.
Maybe the cops need more training. Maybe they could have diffused these situations before arrest became the only option. I don't know. I wasn't there. Neither were you.