UPDATE: I just learned the Seattle Times wrote a story and posted a video on this.
Here’s a letter I wrote to the King County Metro transit department regarding a nasty experience on the 358. Man, this was totally insane. So here’s the letter I sent them:
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Metro,
I would like to tell you about a miserable experience I had on the Metro bus this evening. But more importantly, I’d like to tell you how one of your employees seemed to lose control of a particular situation.
Just before 7:00PM, the Northbound 358 pulled up to 3rd and Virginia. The bus was absolutely packed, so I paused and checked my phone. There was another right behind it. Excited to be on an almost-empty bus, I held back and decided to wait. As the packed 358 was closing the doors and pulling away, I caught view the middle of a violent fist fight in the very back of the bus. It was between about 4 or 5 teenage girls, all unarmed, arguing and punching each other, screaming loudly. I watched one girl land a very hard punch and cut the other girl’s eye. She was bleeding pretty badly. Just before the bus pulled away, a man jumped out the door in a hurry. He told me he was exiting the bus because those girls were fighting and it bothered him. He said the driver didn’t seem to know it was happening and the fight had been going on for a few stops.
We spoke about the soon-to-arrive bus just behind this one and both agreed it was the right choice to try and get on that coach. Not more than 4 minutes later, the bus pulls up and we board. The bus is almost empty and everything seems normal. Except the driver seemed to be a new hire because another more experienced metro driver in uniform was sitting in the seat close to the driver instructing the new driver how to do his job. I looked up at the 4-digit coach number. I was on coach #2355, route 358 Northbound now. It was approximately 7:00PM.
We pulled away from 3rd and Virginia and when we stopped at 3rd and bell, the 358 bus in front of us was emptying completely and all the frustrated riders were trying to escape these mad girls. The large group of riders flooded the bus I was on, filling it completely. This was not ideal for me, but it got worse very quickly. A large subset of the fighting girls were the last to board! They all sat in the front of the bus near me, the driver, and the trainer driver. A few passengers immediately started yelling at the girls to leave.
The bus pulled in to the stop at Denny avenue and one of the girls decided to try and exit the bus. Then she turned around and argued with the girls on the bus and promptly turned around and boarded again. She repeated this quickly a few times, blocking the doorway and all the riders attempting to board. Frustrated by this, the trainer (not the driver, his trainer/mentor) stood up and told her to make up her mind and quit blocking the door. She scoffed at him and he grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her violently and forcing her out onto the sidewalk. He quarreled with her for a few seconds and boarded the bus. She followed him, yelling and screaming. He turned around and used his foot to push her chest and get her out the door. By this time, all the other riders were starting to become very uneasy and were trying to get off the bus to escape the mayhem. She somehow managed to get back in the door before it closed! The bus pulled away, leaving the trainer eye-to-eye with this insanely irate teenage girl and all her screaming friends. They teamed up, lashing out on the trainer with typical disgusting language and insults. The trainer just shook his head and tried to ignore them. This was EXTREMELY annoying to myself and most of the other passengers. It was disturbing to know he had lowered himself to the level of these bickering, inconsiderate teenagers and used violence to try and get the point across.
The bus continued until 85th street, where the (still yelling) girls left the bus. They were screaming about charging the trainer with assault. Everyone on the bus let out a collective sigh of relief.
Here’s what I would like to let you know. The way that trainer conducted himself was by no means what I would have expected from a Metro employee, let alone a responsible adult. He snapped and resorted to a violent conflict that could have been avoided by keeping those girls off the bus as soon as possible. I hope the new driver whom he was mentoring can learn the right lesson from that situation. I hope he can understand that it is completely unacceptable to escalate a situation like that.
