In the caption of the Instagram post, he wrote, “An old white woman got on the train and immediately pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting. I refused, so she went to the conductor and complained. The conductor called the police and stopped the train,” he said.
O’Keefe also says in the caption that the friend of the woman who called the police had said to him, “You’re not the minority anymore.”
A separate video about the incident has been uploaded by the user, Nalae, on TikTok, where it has quickly gone viral, having been viewed over 160,000 times as of reporting.
They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train. They pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one black person on the train. On the platform, the police detained me and interrogated me. Only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest. When I demanded a lawyer and reminded them they didn’t even take a statement from the woman who complained they eventually released me. This country is growing more psycho by the day. What will you do about it?"
Hol up, you can’t just refuse to follow MTA rules on an MTA train and expect the service to go along with you.
Arresting someone for having their feet on the seats is truly excessive. Racism almost certainly was a factor in every step of this process. The woman noticing the man, deciding to police his behavior in public, the MTA and police not just letting it go with a warning. All of it.
If feet were on a seat in violation of MTA rules they can ask you to leave. You don’t get to refuse or argue your case. If that is the case here, a white person could ostensibly go through the same process. There’s plenty of videos of white people doing just that and not acknowledging their own attitude and behavior and getting arrested.
That’s not to say racism didn’t play a role. Just that there could be a plausible explanation given the facts seemingly available for the outcome.
Part of racism’s power is the unequal application of rules. Plausibility is often on the side of racism. While the rules may prohibit feet on the seat (were his feet on the seat here?), it is unlikely this rule is enforced against white people as often as it is for minorities. I’m sure it happens, but the point isn’t “sometimes the rules are applied to white people too”. The point is “the rules are more often and more extremely applied to black people”.
Tangentially related, “the new jim crow” is worth reading.
I also haven’t seen anything about how he was sitting “improperly”, only the accusation that he was, somehow.
Which leads me to believe he wasn’t, really. But even if he was, that doesn’t mean race wasn’t a factor. He could be sitting sprawled out, but if the conductor says “yeah I’m not dealing with this I’m calling the police” I’m very much inclined to believe the officer was likely racist, just by sheer historical precedent.
There’s a lot of "if"s in there.
Just take your feet off the seats when the MTA worker tells you to. Don’t fight the rules, because yeah, that’ll get you kicked off.
If you look at the video, he was sitting in a single row, I don’t see how he could’ve had his feet on a seat, that’s something you do in a double row with seats facing you in front of you.
And a seat next to him.
Yes, everyone should follow the rules. This is about how we as a society handle situations where people break the rules. I’m sure you’ve been pulled over for a traffic violation before. Imagine the best case interaction and the worst case interaction that’s still within the bounds of enforcement regulations, and there’s a spectrum of everything in-between. The problem people are pointing out is that one privileged group of people statistically get better interactions and another group statistically gets worse interactions.
This ends with a police interaction sure, but I just don’t believe a run of the mill MTA worker who was ignoring how he was sitting prior to the complaint is forcing the interaction.
The old lady sure, ignore her. But when the train conductor tells you to sit right, just do it. Don’t make it some service workers problem, and force a whole train to stop over it.
That’s just a dick move, and I’ll die on this hill pointing that out.
There it is.
Have fun with Trump, and not following the rules because freedom, corruption and mass poverty are the same thing to you guys.
Go wave a flag (star spangled, rainbow, or both) and be for or against woke politics or Trump, anything but follow the fucking rules … Even the basic ones like not putting your feet on the seats on public transport.
Little wonder your society is collapsing when the basics don’t apply because of politics.
You sure do live in a rich imagination. What color is the sky?
What a deranged dipshit
People like you need to heave some sense slapped into them.
Holy fuck, your privilege is showing, sweety.
MTA rules apply to all passengers.
https://www.mta.info/document/17001
Your copy pasta skills are impressive. Comprehension, not so much.
Praise challah we has you here!