Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit)

Re:Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay ... by anigbrowl on Sunday November 25, 2018 @08:38PM (#18530369)

True, but a plaintiff's lawyer has an incentive to overstate the problem on the client's behalf. It's irresponsible journalism to just quot this and attribute it to 'lawyer' (a stereo typically responsible person) without mentioning the adversarial context in which the remark is made. 'Plaintiff alleges BART 'a free-for-all' for Criminals' would have been better.

The attorney's duty is to maximize the perceived level of risk, just as it is the defense lawyer's job to dispute that. The article only mentions a single statistic showing a 28% increase in crime in the first 6 months of 2018. One hopes the complaint is more statistically rigorous.

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Re:Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay ... by pteredactyl on Sunday November 25, 2018 @09:06PM (#18530487)

It's true though. Do you ride BART or live in SF or Oakland?

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Re:Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay ... by anigbrowl on Sunday November 25, 2018 @10:47PM (#18530901)

I don't think it is, and yes I do. I'm well aware that crimes happen on BART, someone was murdered at my local station not long ago. But I don't think that 'lawless' is a good description, although many of my journeys take me to stereotypically sketchy stations or occur late at night.

It's because of this subjectivity that I said I hoped the case would turn on a more rigorous definition.

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Re:Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay ... by diogenescynic on Monday November 26, 2018 @12:36AM (#18531328)

Compared to any transit system in another developed country, BART is absolutely lawless.

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Re:Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay ... by cylinder on Monday November 26, 2018 @07:20AM (#18532777)

A guy was murdered at your station recently and a girl was murdered randomly at another station less than a week ago. On the same system! And you think this is normal and not an indication of lawlessness? This is not normal! If there were murders regularly on systems outside of the US they would be national events. This is a good demonstration of how we got here.

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Re:Lawyer: ‘It’s a Free for All’ for Criminals on BART (Bay ... by anigbrowl on Monday November 26, 2018 @07:25PM (#18538145)

Nobody was murdered on Bart less than a week ago, and the murder I was talking about was of a girl, not a guy, back in late July. Getting simple facts wrong is a poor way to begin an argument.

BART is certainly more dangerous than other transit systems in other developed countries, because the US in general is more dangerous than other countries. Deplorable as this is, clusters in small sample sizes are often misleading as to statistical trends, and many of the people commenting here seem not to have first hand experience riding BART.

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