In the caption of the Instagram post, he wrote, “An old white woman got on the train and immediately pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting. I refused, so she went to the conductor and complained. The conductor called the police and stopped the train,” he said.
O’Keefe also says in the caption that the friend of the woman who called the police had said to him, “You’re not the minority anymore.”
A separate video about the incident has been uploaded by the user, Nalae, on TikTok, where it has quickly gone viral, having been viewed over 160,000 times as of reporting.
They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train. They pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one black person on the train. On the platform, the police detained me and interrogated me. Only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest. When I demanded a lawyer and reminded them they didn’t even take a statement from the woman who complained they eventually released me. This country is growing more psycho by the day. What will you do about it?"
What I’m saying is, from this article, it’s really impossible to know. Could be a racist MTA worker, there’s no way to know with certainty from the reporting here.
Maybe he was being argumentative? We don’t know, his statement was “I refused” but there are multiple ways to refuse a request ranging from “No, I don’t think I will” up to “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
We can’t know from this reporting, unfortunately.
TBH, I’d really LIKE to know! If it’s a racist MTA worker, go get him guys! If it’s an asshole rider abusing an innocent MTA worker, I’d like to know that too. Too bad we can’t know from this reporting.
ABCnews are now reporting that he had his feet up:
https://lemmy.world/comment/19545014