The latest incident involved a group of black teens harassing white women. I think this might be the case for most other teen violence incidents, but am not sure.

This definitely was the case in the many bicyclist attacks last year.

It’s very uncertain how much of a causal factor race is, compared to socio-economic and age. Since it has been some kind of a factor (racial epithets were used here, and thus "intimidation" was added as a charge; source: Oregonian) a discussion within the black community sounds like a logical thing to have happen.

I think that’s a good idea. The town I grew up in had elderly volunteers who worked for the police department. They did things like walk the beat and patrol in golf carts. Eyes and ears that could radio in that something was up.

chris-

I usually don’t carry anything more lethal than a library book. I guess I could threaten to paper cut them. Since my current one is about social disconnect within communities, I could try reading it aloud at them.

How many of those kids paid a fare to get onboard? Also, handing someone a ticket/money/pass changes the experience a bit. Perhaps that’s why less crime happens on buses. You are faced with some sort of authority upon boarding. I think there is a bit of a "free-for-all" atmosphere on the Max trains because the driver is compartmentalized away from the passengers and can’t see what’s going on behind them. Yes, that’s how all metro subway systems work too, but metro subway systems force everyone to buy a ticket before entering the platform.

I rode the bus to work for about 6 years and never saw a situation that got out of control. A few times, I witnessed the bus driver stop the bus and confront badly-behaving passengers and generally that was all that was needed.

Since we can’t really pay the driver on Max, how about a ticket collector on every train? Probably would be cheaper than installing a turnstile at every train entrance (which just sounds impossible to implement at this point).

Penthesilea – I understand your need to protect your child and yourself. That is totally understandable. I can’t imagine every person on that train had a child though.

Thanks all for the comments.

I’m upset that no one helped, and I’m baffled that the victim reported that no one on the train even called 911 on their cell phones (except the driver it turns out later). I’ve called the police on a crazy lady walking down the Interstate Max tracks and the transit cops were there in less than 2 minutes – perhaps enough time to catch this Adrian dude.