Alex O'Keefe shared a video on social media of him being arrested, with the clip quickly going viral.

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?"

  • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    4 hours ago

    That sounds like a good way to approach the situation.

    Ask the other rider to fix their behavior. If they don’t, ask the conductor to ask the other rider to fix their behavior. If they don’t, I don’t think you need to call the cops.

    The conductor could just as much charge the rider some fee that can be posted in the rider policy of the train, in the train, in the ticketing app for the train, at the station, etc. This way the train owner/operator can collect some remedy for the rider’s violation of the rules to help fund remediating the rider’s impact to the train environment (like cleaning their specific seat when that’s usually outside the conductor’s responsibilities), including a markup if they want to add that.

    Now, I don’t think charging fees will work for every violation. But I still think it’s a valid lever the train owner/operator could make use of instead of bringing the entire train to a halt.

    If the rider refuses to pay up, then call the cops. Or, the conductor could also ask the rider in violation to exit the train at the next stop. That’s another option. If that fails, call the cops.

    Additionally, if cops are needed, the conductor could call them and ask them to meet the train at one of the stops coming up. This way the arrival of the cops could be timed with the arrival of the train to the station. Minimizes impact to everyone else’s schedule, and ensures cops have access to the train since most of the time spent on a train is in between stations which often isn’t accessible by road.

    I think there are ways to better manage this than to stop a train as soon as a conductor witnesses a violation and start a train only after cops arrive to that specific location and escort the rider violator off the train.