An Asian man has been assaulted by a racist passenger on a San Francisco BART train.
Nextshark reports that an incident involving a drunk passenger verbally and physically assaulting an Asian man on a New York BART train occurred on 13 November.
A clip of the incident was shared on Reddit and Youtube by user pacmanwu, who recorded the video. In the clip, the drunk man is heard calling the Asian man a “nigger” and a “Chinese nigger”. The assaulter then hits the man and continues to taunt him before slapping him in the face.
“I hate you, you fucking Chinese fuck,” the drunk man says. The Asian man remains calm until he is slapped in the face. “If you put your hands on me one more time motherfucker,” the Asian man says as he stands up to defend himself.
Other passengers intervene, telling the Asian man that the drunk man is “not worth it”.
BART Police Deparment reportedly received three calls on Monday night from passengers on the Warm Springs-bound train reporting a disturbance involving a man. Officers boarded the train at Union City Station but the patrons were no longer on board or were willing to point out the offender.
Redditor pacmanwu wrote in a post:
“This happened last night (11/13/2017) when I was taking BART in the south Fremont direction, when this old white man started directing racial slurs to a fellow Asian passenger. I started filming this just in case there’s a need for visual evidence, and called the BART police right after the video was over. The Asian man never paid attention to him after that, and the old man left before the police arrived. Many passengers actually helped to prevent any further escalation, but none really tried to speak up and defend him (including me). I honestly didn’t know what’s the best course of action other than calling the police and collecting evidence.”
“After looking at all the comments, I feel like I should have done more in defending him, but I was scared myself since I’m asian as well. I guess I’m a coward after all.
“I called the police after this, and many passengers actually did their best in preventing any further escalation. I was in the situation and honestly was scared of speaking up, since I didn’t know what I could do to help (other than starting a bigger verbal war and risked getting attacked as well).”
BART Communications Department Manager Alicia Trost sent Nextshark the following statement:
“We have sent this video to the BART Police Watch Commander. We are waiting to hear back from BPD about what calls came in and if we made contact with the suspect or anyone from on that train.
“The video captures an unfortunate, ugly scene. However, several things went right despite the belligerent and bigoted actions of one individual.
“Number one, passengers on board the train suggested contacting BART police. Again, we haven’t determined yet if that actually took place. But, contacting police is always the best course of action – the police are law enforcement professionals trained to handle situations such as this.
“Number two, the subject of the attack was deliberate in his response and reasonable in his actions.
“Number three, fellow passengers voiced their support for the victim without actually physically intervening.
“Number four, one of the passengers moved away from the attacker. This is always a good option – physically remove yourself from the threat until police arrive.
“Now, to put this into context, our daily ridership is about 420,000 people each weekday. Our “crimes against person per million riders” rate during the most recent reporting period (July through September) was 3.15 crimes per million riders.
“We understand we live in politically-charged, turbulent times. To reinforce our values, we’ve launched a Bay Area rides together campaign.”
A Reddit user claiming to be the man who was harassed posted on Reddit, saying:
“Ok so I’m half hoping noone sees this. That’s me he is “harassing”. This started because the old man was yelling the Nword repeatedly and noone was doing or saying a damn thing about it. I told him to stop talking repeatedly and that’s what’s caused him to start yelling at me. I am both proud and embarrassed that I didn’t hit him.”
Witnesses and the victim are encouraged to contact BART PD Investigations at 510-464-7040. If you have any further information and would like to leave an anonymous tip, call 510-464-7011.
