From the San Francisco Chronicle:
BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, hold up riders
BART police are beefing up patrols at Oakland stations after dozens of juveniles terrorized riders Saturday night when they invaded the Coliseum Station and commandeered a train car, forcing passengers to hand over bags and cell phones and leaving at least two with head injuries.
The incident — the first of its kind in recent memory — occurred around 9:30 p.m. Saturday. Witnesses told police that 40 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently held open the doors of a Dublin-bound train car while others streamed inside, confronting and robbing and in some cases beating riders.
Sounds like BART has a deferred maintenence problem:
Six of the nine cars on the train had working surveillance cameras, and BART police were viewing video from those cars as well as station cameras, Trost said.
“We are in the process of pulling all surveillance video, and we will share with Oakland police, Oakland Unified School District and Oakland Housing Authority to see if they can help identify the minors,” Trost said. “We have had success with sharing images of juveniles with this group and identifying and making arrests in the past.”
Emphasis mine - and this little gem:
The incident presents another challenge for BART, which hired a new police chief last week. The agency has struggled to contain fare evaders and is in the midst of installing surveillance cameras in train cars after The Chronicle reported that most of the existing cameras were decoys.
Most of the cameras were decoys? Seriously WTF! A perfect example of civilization in an entitlement era.
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