Inconvenient Truth: the Crime Edition

For your own sake put your laptop away 

On Saturday night dozens of "minors" swarmed a BART train at the Oakland Coliseum station [bold added]:

Witnesses told police that 40 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently held open the doors of a Dublin-bound train car while others streamed inside, confronting and robbing and in some cases beating riders...

[S]even people were robbed — with the victims losing a purse, a duffel bag and five phones. Six people were robbed inside the train car, with a seventh confronted on the platform, she said. Police received no reports of guns or other weapons being brandished.

A police summary prepared after the incident said that at least two victims suffered injuries to the face or head that required medical attention.

The story resonates because it's easy to identify with the victims. BART has hundreds of thousands of daily riders, and the Coliseum station is along one of the busiest arteries.

BART isn't sharing surveillance videos "because the attackers appear to be minors." That's not the real reason, IMHO.

Crime is rampant in the area--notorious gangs are headquartered nearby---and BART doesn't want to strike fear in the heart of suburban customers commuting to their jobs in San Francisco. Also, the crime is very likely to have been committed by young, mostly non-white men who reside in the area, and BART doesn't want to inflame already-negative emotions. For the record I'm in favor of releasing the videos, not only to catch the perpetrators but also to protect the public.

In the March for Science this weekend marchers, and many California authorities, proudly said that they were on the side of "truth." Apparently, they meant only truths that they agreed with.

[Update - 4/25: BART keeps riders in dark about teen mob robbery.]