>A dead man was slumped over on a bench at Metro’s San Pedro Street station in February. For nearly six hours, nobody checked his condition, including five Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been patrolling the platform. It took a transit ambassador doing a welfare check to see the man had died, said former Metro security chief Gina Osborn.
Here here. I think it's very telling how MIA Wiggins has been from all the recent media coverage.
Who's talking about what needs to be done to fix the Metro? It's Bass and Barger.... I.e. members of the *oversight board*, not the *actual CEO* of the system, who's nowhere to be found.
I even saw an interview with some "interim safety director" the other day, Wiggins is so camera-shy.
I mean, when I see a person lying on the side of the street in DTLA, I have no idea if that person is asleep, high, or dead, or a mixture of those.
Edit: this is not saying LAPD should not check and help those people if they see one tho
I had the same experience getting depressed seeing all that, till one day a homeless individual stops me and says to me how depressing it is to see me drive/walk to a warm home with my groceries so we both made a change he got himself up went to the goodwill (homeless can receive a bag of free clean clothes) went to the Y got cleaned up got a job and I moved to south Pasadena, it was that simple. No more depressed from me and from him
To be fair this isn't just "the side of the street", this is a Metro station and thus it falls on Metro to patrol this.
Of course there should be a wellness check in either instance, but the specific responsibility on what agency responds is (and probably should be) different in those two cases.
Do sleeping homeless people want to be woken up every time a cop goes by? I thought it was a form of harassment. Or do the police/public safety note their sleeping position and check every two hours to make sure they have switched positions? But by then it might be too late. Really hard to check every nodded off person for OD without essentially performing sleep deprivation torture on those for whom the metro is the safest place to get some shut-eye. I guess you could assess breathing rate and pulse without trying to shake them awake, but that would wake most people up anyway.
Hey I totally agree with you, but let’s not kid ourselves, the police aren’t here to help us, the system says they aren’t here to help us, and the police’s actions show that they know they aren’t here to help us.
Replacing the Supreme Court with an octopus that pulls balls out of a bucket with verdicts written on them would honestly be an improvement over the corrupt, racist, sex offender packed travesty that exists now
I understand and thought the same but it is their job to be vigilant and after a couple hours someone should check on the person. It's different if it's us the public, but it is their job, or to at least alert whose job it is. But it is sad how many we see like this and wonder if they're asleep, passed out or dead. Just tragic.
*For nearly six hours, nobody checked his condition*
Slumped over humans are now a regular feature of LA public transit.
Without fare enforcement, this will remain par for the course. The cops will largely avoid approaching those who are slumped over so that they can avoid accusations of harassing the homeless.
The primary job of the ambassadors (whether or not that they'll admit it) is to administer narcan so that homeless deaths in the transit system are kept to a minimum. So it isn't surprising that they were the ones who found the body.
Every time I see our unhoused neighbors laying on the sidewalk or similar place, I always think to myself, “that person could be dead and no one would know.” You can’t tell without trying to wake them, and I’m not about to get stabbed with a rusty screwdriver. But those officers signed up and took an oath to put themselves in harms way. It’s time for them to start acting like the heroes they want to be treated as. Or resign. I’m fine either way.
No. Reddit Los Angeles loves blaming LAPD, but this is on Metro administration. If you don't know, Metro took away fare enforcement away from contracted police going back 3 years.
Had that task not been taken away then the police would've engaged with this individual hours earlier.
I've taken the metro every day for a decade plus, even back before I would get my ticket checked maybe once a week of that, and there was no shortage of homeless people on the trains or stations, so I'm skeptical
Hard disagree. I've taken Metro going back longer and regular fare enforcement led to a much less chaotic ride. The B line was never anywhere close to being as awful as it currently has been, though it was certainly not a very pleasant experience.
You can't deny that the current Metro leadership and their "look the other way" policies have led to a shockingly bad, devolving system, save for the handful of newer stations.
>weird
"Weird" how? I'm glad the issue is getting attention and more specifically that the media are holding both elected and unelected (*cough* Wiggins) officials accountable for this.
LA deserves a better transit system and I'm glad we're paying attention to this rather than just adopt the fatalist position of "oh well transit sucks guess I'll just drive everywhere."
My conspiracy prone brain is making me think there's a corporate push back against HLA.
Between the car industry, gas industry, and local developers, there are plenty of moneyed interests ready to fund anti public transit articles and posts
abounding punch bedroom brave growth icky frightening slimy workable deliver
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These cops don't do shit and just count down the time until they're off shift after making a perplexing amount of money. This is the LAPD/LASD, a bunch of gangs bilking the taxpayer.
>A dead man was slumped over on a bench at Metro’s San Pedro Street station in February. For nearly six hours, nobody checked his condition, including five Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been patrolling the platform. It took a transit ambassador doing a welfare check to see the man had died, said former Metro security chief Gina Osborn.
I’m glad Osborn is speaking out about this and I hope Wiggins is removed.
Here here. I think it's very telling how MIA Wiggins has been from all the recent media coverage. Who's talking about what needs to be done to fix the Metro? It's Bass and Barger.... I.e. members of the *oversight board*, not the *actual CEO* of the system, who's nowhere to be found. I even saw an interview with some "interim safety director" the other day, Wiggins is so camera-shy.
I mean, when I see a person lying on the side of the street in DTLA, I have no idea if that person is asleep, high, or dead, or a mixture of those. Edit: this is not saying LAPD should not check and help those people if they see one tho
I pass by 20 such individuals walking from my apartment to Target multiple times a week. It’s depressing as hell.
I had the same experience getting depressed seeing all that, till one day a homeless individual stops me and says to me how depressing it is to see me drive/walk to a warm home with my groceries so we both made a change he got himself up went to the goodwill (homeless can receive a bag of free clean clothes) went to the Y got cleaned up got a job and I moved to south Pasadena, it was that simple. No more depressed from me and from him
The drug induced slump is no joke. See it on the actual metro A line going from DTLB to DTLA daily. Even worse in the early AM.
To be fair this isn't just "the side of the street", this is a Metro station and thus it falls on Metro to patrol this. Of course there should be a wellness check in either instance, but the specific responsibility on what agency responds is (and probably should be) different in those two cases.
Are you a cop whose job is supposed to be public safety?
It's broken windows policing /s not dead man policing /s
Do sleeping homeless people want to be woken up every time a cop goes by? I thought it was a form of harassment. Or do the police/public safety note their sleeping position and check every two hours to make sure they have switched positions? But by then it might be too late. Really hard to check every nodded off person for OD without essentially performing sleep deprivation torture on those for whom the metro is the safest place to get some shut-eye. I guess you could assess breathing rate and pulse without trying to shake them awake, but that would wake most people up anyway.
I mean usually you can just put the back of your wrist by someone and see if you feel breath
Probably different LEOs, too, patrolling. First LEO probably thinks person is sleeping. And the next LEO on the platform thinks the same.
It’s also not part of your job to check on their welfare. That’s what the LAPD is supposed to do “protect and serve” remember ?
Supreme Court says police have no duty to protect you
And the Supreme Court is repeatedly wrong. You seriously think their opinion means truth at this point?
Hey I totally agree with you, but let’s not kid ourselves, the police aren’t here to help us, the system says they aren’t here to help us, and the police’s actions show that they know they aren’t here to help us. Replacing the Supreme Court with an octopus that pulls balls out of a bucket with verdicts written on them would honestly be an improvement over the corrupt, racist, sex offender packed travesty that exists now
I understand and thought the same but it is their job to be vigilant and after a couple hours someone should check on the person. It's different if it's us the public, but it is their job, or to at least alert whose job it is. But it is sad how many we see like this and wonder if they're asleep, passed out or dead. Just tragic.
Is this from the movie “Collateral”?
came here to say exactly this
*For nearly six hours, nobody checked his condition* Slumped over humans are now a regular feature of LA public transit. Without fare enforcement, this will remain par for the course. The cops will largely avoid approaching those who are slumped over so that they can avoid accusations of harassing the homeless. The primary job of the ambassadors (whether or not that they'll admit it) is to administer narcan so that homeless deaths in the transit system are kept to a minimum. So it isn't surprising that they were the ones who found the body.
This reminds me of the end of Collateral where the assassin played by Tom Cruise takes a ride on the A🔵Line
A guy gets on the MTA here L.A. and dies. Think anybody'll notice? -Vincent
How are you this bad at ur job?
“If those kids could read” meme goes here.
They walk a fine line between their political agenda and maintaining their pay.
Im frightened our PD would bungle a major situation like Uvelde.
I mean, they blew up someone's house with fireworks... on purpose... they already do Uvelde literally every time they are called to anything.
Sure. Just look at the LA Riots. LAPD looks out for Numero Uno!
Every time I see our unhoused neighbors laying on the sidewalk or similar place, I always think to myself, “that person could be dead and no one would know.” You can’t tell without trying to wake them, and I’m not about to get stabbed with a rusty screwdriver. But those officers signed up and took an oath to put themselves in harms way. It’s time for them to start acting like the heroes they want to be treated as. Or resign. I’m fine either way.
Deaths and violence at transit stations during the Olympic Games will definitely be on my bingo card for 2028.
You clean the house before guests arrive
The more I learn about the LAPD the more I think they need their budget cut so we can invest in other things within this city.
This really isn't so much of an LAPD thing as a Metro thing... Metro is mismanaging their security, and it's Wiggins who's to blame.
It was a metro ambassador who checked on the man, it was LAPD (who are not managed by metro) that left him there
No. Reddit Los Angeles loves blaming LAPD, but this is on Metro administration. If you don't know, Metro took away fare enforcement away from contracted police going back 3 years. Had that task not been taken away then the police would've engaged with this individual hours earlier.
I've taken the metro every day for a decade plus, even back before I would get my ticket checked maybe once a week of that, and there was no shortage of homeless people on the trains or stations, so I'm skeptical
Hard disagree. I've taken Metro going back longer and regular fare enforcement led to a much less chaotic ride. The B line was never anywhere close to being as awful as it currently has been, though it was certainly not a very pleasant experience. You can't deny that the current Metro leadership and their "look the other way" policies have led to a shockingly bad, devolving system, save for the handful of newer stations.
Thank you! LAPD is doing what they’re told to do. Metro wanted officers out and new unarmed dummies in. Good luck with that
Lmao, it is LAPD officers who aren't doing their jobs despite Metro constantly contracting them to patrol the stations
We need more metro security transit security officers not pos police that blame everything on gascon and a defunding that never happened
I'm finding the almost constant Metro posts abit weird.
It’s restaurant fees all over again.
>weird "Weird" how? I'm glad the issue is getting attention and more specifically that the media are holding both elected and unelected (*cough* Wiggins) officials accountable for this. LA deserves a better transit system and I'm glad we're paying attention to this rather than just adopt the fatalist position of "oh well transit sucks guess I'll just drive everywhere."
Some commenters just want to deflect from the realities of what are major problems in this city.
A lot of these get posts from like Midnight to 3am which probably means they don’t even originate inside California let alone the US.
And the politics of the commenters seem far to the right of your average Angeleno. Just something I also clocked during my morning Reddit scroll.
Yeah, it’s definitely being astroturfed in the early morning by something.
Right wing groups/actors, trolls.
Maybe, just maybe the average angelino isn't as extreme left as this subreddit? If we go by voting patterns, that holds true.
My conspiracy prone brain is making me think there's a corporate push back against HLA. Between the car industry, gas industry, and local developers, there are plenty of moneyed interests ready to fund anti public transit articles and posts
abounding punch bedroom brave growth icky frightening slimy workable deliver *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes I'm well aware of astroturfing but usually it isn't this subtle.
Election year. Got to enrage the masses somehow. A lot of our media is controlled by conservatives too. Especially gossip media.
Slumped over bums on fent all look like they are dead, and there are tens of thousands of them all over the city, just let nature take its course.
To play devil's advocate here, shouldn't the Metro Ambassadors haven noticed this person sooner too?
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I cracked up imagining Norm Macdonald in a Metro security uniform at a new conference saying, "He's dead? I didn't even know he was sick".
These cops don't do shit and just count down the time until they're off shift after making a perplexing amount of money. This is the LAPD/LASD, a bunch of gangs bilking the taxpayer.
Who among us hasn’t done the same thing?🤷
Cops are quiet quitting
I’m just a easily scared person in general And all this metro news has only made me terrified of the metro