The Pepper spray comment is valid. The attacker had been sprayed before and was obviously out to return the favor…… I would have called Mom and insist to stay by the side of the SPD even if he told me not to.

Again… We have had kids killing each other in the south end… where is all the hubris about an armed officer on every block there? Now that agencices are making sure it does not happen again in the tunnel, I want the extra COST born by the rat pack involved. And if we can suddenly find funding for THIS, how about finding funding to stop the shootings at the SOUTH end of town…

Of the public officials I’ve known over the years, especially with Metro and Sound Transit, few if any have been stupid, malicious, or personally corrupt.
Having lived in places where every public project budget needs column space for things that fall off trucks and contracts that have to go to somebody’s brother, I think we can be grateful for the general condition of the city and the transit system.

And that the footwear used in this last attack had rubber toes instead of steel. I’m not the only blog reader who’s seen worse.

After thirty-odd years here, there are things about this place that drive me nuts, including the official hesitancy to call things by their right names. After Chicago and Detroit, I’m still easier with aggressive aggression than the passive kind.

Does anybody remember the “Almost Live” takeoff on “The Fugitive”, where the hero frantically runs around Westlake Center asking if anyone’s seen the one-armed man who killed his wife? And encountering first a man who offers to cut off his own arm if it will help, and then a woman who scolds him for not using the term “upper-extremity challenged?” And someone from the Downtown Seattle Association demanding that he sign a petition to keep people with unsightly physical conditions out of the CBD?

Unfortunately, the only group or element I can think to “blame” for the loss of this necessary civic corrective are the executives who canceled “Almost Live,” and if they’re still in the industry, having to watch their network’s current programming is punishment enough.

The worst thing about the “Who’s To Blame” approach is that it pretends every problem is simply an HR matter. There’s no individual whose termination would have prevented that attack from happening, and no “new hire” who can make future ones less likely- given the same budget and operating orders.

As voters we can fire the elected officials who ultimately run the transit system- but if we as voters don’t give them the necessary tax money and organized political assistance to get problems fixed, a year-round recall election season won’t make the transit system any safer.

Knowledgeable citizens can present ideas and experience, work on campaigns, testify in court against malefactors, and position themselves between attackers and victims- which is exponentially effective relative to the number of people stepping in. That’s where the energy ought to go.

The Seattle Transit Blog is an excellent tool for organizing the defense of our transit system in every sense, and is doing a good job. Just next time, a better title would be: “What Do We Have to Do to Fix This?”

Mark Dublin

And that young lady, her bully friends/assaultants, knew they would have support and security, what kind of security is this and the leadership who instructed security? All of You have given Seattle a Bad Name.

You have been Actually trying to be In Denial of Reality and let our AF-AM Youth Run Wild. Thank You God For Having This Camera for the World To See What They Think Is A Little Problem.

It’s only fair they they and their families s should die horrible deaths…let’s all make sure that that occurs!

There is an epidemic of murder and assault in the schools here with upwards of 50 murders of students in the past couple of years. The west side of Chicago is a cesspool of blight, crime, despair and frankly dangerous people. A major prison happens to be located there. Its the county jail that is probably as large as the State Penitentiary in Monroe.

So, your contention is that living an isolated existence in a suburb “creates” the fear. I would suggest it was the fear of people that are different as well as the “real” specter of crime they were seeing that drove people to make choices to move to the suburbs. In Seattle’s case it was probably desegregation of schools that started it in the 1960′s and 70′s.

In many past civilizations, an operation rendering a man incapable of reproducing also opened career opportunities of extremely high esteem and great actual power. The reasoning was that these individuals would never be able to physically produce a claimant to the throne, and so became invaluable as “disinterested” professional advisers and technicians.

At one period of Chinese history, the operation became such a career boost that the authorities had to forbid men from rushing to the clinic to become eunuchs so as to put themselves ahead in line for a government position, as the supply was so far outstripping the demand.

The founder of the legendary Chinese commercial “Treasure Fleet”, Zheng He, involuntarily became a eunuch when he was captured as a prisoner of war at a very young age. But he rose through the court to become both China’s most famous admiral and, by contemporary account, a huge and imposing man seven feet tall.

Who, had he happened to be at Westlake Station, would definitely have prevented the assault, especially if Olympic Security had provided him with a uniform.

So fairness requires some other term meaning “overly risk averse and excessively budget-conscious.” English is pretty weak for insults sometimes, so maybe some other language can sum it up better.

Mark Dublin

Bad kids are bad kids who eventually become bad adults, point blank period. White, black, green or purple, if you don’t have discipline in your life, you’ll behave undisciplined. The real debate is whether the “observer and report” policy is an effective one. No one, whatever skin color or ethnicity, wants to be jumped while waiting for the train or bus. Everyone, especially folks of color, want to know that when they ask the police for help, they’ll be helped.

But as someone from the Northeast, I’ve been warned about the Pacific Northwest’s difficulties with diversity and the huge presence of white supremacists living in and around the places like Seattle and Portland.

False. Repeating this is a lie. Those security personnel did do things – they called for help, they protected bystanders, they intervened in word and gesture – all within a 22 second period. This “did nothing” canard is a LIE.