On September 11, 2005 my housemates' and my formerly-pure infatuation with public transportation (one of the reasons I moved away from SoCal in the first place) became significantly more ambivalent.
We had just left the Solano Stroll in Berkeley and were waiting in the North Berkeley Station for a BART back to San Francisco. We sat on a bench in the far end of the station comparing quarters from different states. When we got to Alabama, a black guy, about our age, gold teeth, asked us for a cigarette. We told him sorry. His eyes stayed on us a little too long and he walked away. Moments later, screams came from down the platform. The same man was attacking a small Asian woman who, despite his attacks, kept following him. Then she was on the ground and he was standing above her. A PDA slid away from the scuffle and he dived for it. Some people tried to fight the black man, others tried to help the Asian woman. Shouts for police and paramedics. Someone shouted, "Oh my God he's going to die down here." Another got on the intercom: "We need massive security down here!" A guy in a red shirt punched the black guy in the face three times. A train pulled up, and the black guy jumped onto it. Onlookers followed him and told the passengers what had happened. Passengers stuck their bicycles in the doorways so that the train couldn't leave, and everybody got off the train. The station became crowded and I heard nervous busibodies tell the newly-arrived their version of what was going on.
I waited there for what seemed like ages. The train just sat there, empty. As far as I knew, the black man was still on there. Blood was splattered on the platform floor, on the wall next to the telecom, and on the outside of the train. Everybody was asking where the police were. Unobservant people were scolded when they stepped in the blood; when they realized where their feet were, they shivered and gasped.
I learned that the man had stabbed some people after trying to rob the Asian woman, who was deaf. She was now crying, missing one shoe, and her finger was bleeding. He had run onto the train and thrown the knife under his seat. Then he sat, as if tossing the weapon underneath him and pulling on a smile would fool all the onlookers who were yelling that he had stabbed people. He finally decided to get off the train and run up the stairs. On his way up, a BART policeman just happened (no seriously, "just happened" -- he wasn't actually responding to our phone calls) to be coming down the stairs and he apprehended the guy.
Finally one cop, who looked like a slim Brendan Frasier, came down to the platform. The entire time, the crowd had acted bravely and cooperatively: trying to protect the victim, trying to fight off the mugger, stopping the train, translating sign language for the deaf woman, putting her shoe back on, calling somebody to come pick her up... Nearly everybody at least tried to help somehow. But once the single cop was involved, the crowd thinned. He separated the witnesses from the non. My housemates and I went to the witness side, which, unlike the crowd, had thinned to mostly white people. Brendan Frasier carried the knife from the train, holding it in white cloth.
The cop took down our information, and we waited as the trains flew past us without stopping. The BART announcers repeated that the North Berkeley Station was closed due to an ongoing police matter. More cops appeared with yellow tape and some numbered placards that they placed next to splatters of blood. The BART Tactical Squad came in, wearing black combat wear. Everybody except us witnesses had gradually found a way to leave the station.
I was instructed by a BART Tactical Cop, hours later, not to discuss what I had seen with anyone until I had given my statement. The police were inept. It took them two hours to get around to taking our statements, and they only did so because we reminded them that they had forgotton us. A woman and her son tried to talk to me about the mayhem. Like most of the witnesses there, they seemed eager to give the police what they wanted to hear. I just grunted at them.
I was careful when I gave my statement. I left out a lot of things because I couldn't remember them exactly. I never described the suspect to the cop or mentioned his physical appearance in any way. I was waiting for the cop to ask me about it. When I proof read what he had written, I saw that he had replaced each of my "suspect"s with "black male".
Afterwards, the sergeant took me outside to identify the suspect. I was nervous - the responsibility of identifying someone who has been accused of a robbery and quadruple stabbing. I stood behind a cop car facing the suspect, the high beams shining on him making it impossible for him to see me. He didn't look scared. He looked sort of happy, in fact. But that was probably because he was on drugs. I didn't give a positive identification until he smiled and I saw gold teeth shining. read more