If You See Something, Say Some… No, Wait, It Would Be Best To Keep Quiet
Have you ever seen a bus run a red light and endanger your fellow pedestrians? Did you think that it might be a good idea to record that action on your smartphone so you could alert the bus company?
Did you ever consider that the bus driver would stop the bus, get out, and choke you?
One witness told the Standard: “The bus driver had apparently run a red light and the pedestrian filmed it on her phone.
“The next moment the bus driver pulled up and left the bus in the middle of the road and stopped the traffic.
“She assaulted the pedestrian, grabbed her and dragged her onto the pavement. The driver was stood over her like Muhammad Ali and started arguing with the people who came to help.”
In a statement on Friday the Metropolitan police said it was investigating an allegation of assault.
“A 27-year-old woman reported to police that she had been assaulted by the driver of a tour bus. No arrests were made and enquires continue.”
Well, we wouldn’t want the rights of the bus driver to step out and whip some nosy college girl’s ass to be infringed on, y’know? One has to wonder exactly what kind of proof the Metropolitan Police would need to arrest someone. Would they have arrested Jack Ruby back in the day or would they have just continued the ol’ enquiries? Here in the Land Of Trans Fats And Beauty Pageants For Five Year Olds we’re always hearing about how London is under the proverbial Electric Eye…
…do we have time for a Judas Priest video here? We do? Great!
…and back to the topic at hand. In fact, there is one camera in the UK for every eleven subjects but the city of London is not any safer despite the intrusion of so-called public privacy. I wonder why that is? Is it because when you give the cops a video of a bus driver experiencing a psychotic episode, they just continue the enquiries? I mean, here in America, we usually reserve the privilege of avoiding prosecution for a public beating to, um, the police, and rich people, and celebrities. What’s the world coming to when a bus driver can get away with the same kind of stuff that Hope Solo does?
More by Jack Baruth
Comments
Join the conversation
Great thinking on the part of the bus driver -- turn a video that, if the person even bothered to submit it to your employer, no one would really care about into full blow assault charges and basically guaranteed dismissal. I'm thinking there must have been some trolling or words exchanged with the woman behind the camera before this started.
I've noticed a difference between the UK and USA. In the UK, you go to a government office, or the post office, or any number of other businesses and you'll see signs saying 'verbal or physical abuse of our staff will not be tolerated'. In the USA it's words to the effect of any abuse of patrons of this establishment will not be tolerated. In the USA customer service isn't what it was, but people are still cheerful, polite, helpful and generally speaking you leave happier than when you arrived. In England it's obvious many people working with customers should never ever have been allowed to! Borderline rudeness, bitterness and apathy seem to be the usual traits. One of the things I've noticed is that in the years I've lived in California and travelled around the USA, banks and post offices are the best example. Light open spaces with helpful staff. In England, everyone is behind an inch of bulletproof glass and it's like talking to a convicted killer (from what I've seen on tv shows anyway!). I was ok about going back to England after my 6 1/2 years in Palm Springs until I read this. Now I'm dreading the sullen disrespect I'm going to come across everywhere I go.