This is why it’s important to remember that in any revolution, resistance, or targeted action, it’s the police that are the first enemy. They’ll be the ones that respond first, and will likely toe the line the most reliably.
Tbh, it always has been.
The only problem is that we’ve been set up so that the people that are most likely to oppose the worst case scenario are the ones least likely to be both armed and willing to fight.
Just wait, though. If things slide the way they could, it won’t be long before the party policy shifts against armed citizens.
NY transit starts getting complaints about an ad they have no idea about.
“No, m’mam, we don’t have a death penalty policy…no…no m’man, I don’t know what poster you saw…”
Fortunately none of them died as far as I can find. Surgeons had to crack open the skull of the bystander they shot in the back of the head to relieve his brain swelling though. I hope he recovers because he’s gonna be set for life.
They spent 150 million on overtime for cops to stop fare evasion. How much were they losing in fares? I’m gonna go ahead and guess it wasn’t even a teeny fraction of that.
They spent 1500x more on enforcement than they could have ever recovered from fare evaders. Just like every single other monitoring and enforcement program for public services.
Has there ever been a single program like that which is actually a net positive? Fare enforcement, food stamps means testing, public services with drug screens, “welfare queen” check ups, means testing, etc. I’m not aware of a single instance where it wouldn’t have been cheaper just to let a few people get benefits that “didn’t deserve them” than putting these restrictions in place
But God’s forbid we let poor people have nice things, or just to do good things for our society. Goddamned toxic puritanicalism. …
Well wait…can the NY transit be blamed for that, if it was NYPD?
That would be like if some guy stole a loaf of bread from a grocery store, so they call the cops, and the cop shoots the theif.
Do you blame the grocery store?
The vast majority of people who steal food from a grocery aren’t doing it out of malicious reasoning but simply for their and their families survival.
Using a systemic monopoly on violence to stop people from trying to non violently survive in a world that refuses to help them is always immoral.
We should be calling the cops on supermarket chains for hoarding and not sharing their exes of wealth with citizens who actually need it.
Don’t worry there’s plenty of blame to go around in this fucked up system we’ve got.
But I agree with you. No matter what this guy did, these cops engineered an unnecessary confrontation and then shot innocent bystanders, the suspect, AND themselves. They are to blame. They are not qualified to use firearms in the performance of their duties because they lack good judgement.
The fun part is of the 4 people shot, only the one had skipped the fare. Two were bystanders, one was another cop.
so is this ad meant to push people to pay the fare or to start a revolution?
I’d say a bit of both. The numbers they showed for it if I remember was that they spent $150m to catch like $100,000 of fares that were skipped. Then throw in 4 people dead and you didn’t do much to help. You just made it more miserable for people travelling.
With fares making up 23% of your income, and payroll taking up over 30% of expenses… Odds are they could cut the number of guards patrolling tolls, ticket sales people, customer service reps, maintenance workers for all the machines/guard terminals etc by a shit ton and make the transportation free, and offset the costs elsewhere. It would also likely boost the economy of the area, do to people not needing to scrape together a couple dollars to take the train and spending it at businesses they otherwise may normally avoid do to costs or not having that extra few dollars.
In Ontario, asshole political leader Doug Ford is trying to stop free public transit by paying for transit cops out of the provincial budget. That way no one can make the payment you just made. Can we have the same amount of money to spend on improving public transit? No. The only thing fearless leader Doug Ford fears more than free public transit is good public transit.
What a bag of dicks. Watch other conservative states and provinces follow his lead!
Wait, where in Ontario has free transit? The topic of your article, Ottawa, charges for transit.
Well, I’ll give you an update here as I have boots on the ground:
They cut back on the amount of cops on the platforms now—but now every single exit door has a private guard (one of those rent a cop companies). So now they’re bringing privatized security into the mix. But there are still cops on the platforms! Just not as many at the door because they’ve hired some security guards to have the same effect an MTA person has, which means they can’t really do shit if you don’t let them stop you.
So a slightly different way to waste money.
At this point it would be better usage of money to make it a surveillance state instead of a police state, cameras won’t shoot you
That’s what I think when I see deadly high speed chases occuring, like unless the person is imminently trying to harm others could they maybe just wait for him to drive home and then make an arrest?
