Yesterday we told you about two recent Muni macings, that appeared to be reported to but undocumented by the SFPD — and today we’ve got additional confirmation that not only did the Muni driver in yesterday’s attack fail to call in the incident, but that SFPD appears not to be investigating the reported attack.
As of Friday afternoon, tireless searching from SFPD spokesperson Sgt. Troy Dangerfield was unable to turn up any reports of Thursday morning’s Muni macing. “It is possible” he inquired delicately “that this event did not occur?”
I’m inclined to think that it did happen, however, as other readers have emailed in their firsthand accounts of Thursday’s scene (and another’s posted an account in the comments). Here’s one:
“All of a sudden this really angry young woman on my left side walked to the back row from the back door…said something like “watch what I do next time” and then walked away. The bus was just arriving at a stop when this happened, so she got off…right away. It took about 10 seconds before people realized what had happened, we all started coughing and feeling the effects, got up, and everyone got off. The driver didn’t notice anything until everyone started hopping off and one was panicking because her child started coughing and crying.”
“(The) driver went back and opened all the windows, checked things out – but he never even got off the bus to look at who it was. This whole time she’s just walking calmly down the street. And then she was gone. We weren’t even there 2 minutes before he told people to get back on and the bus started moving. He didn’t call anyone, didn’t radio it in, nothing!”
SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose confirmed with us that no one from SFPD’s contacted him to request video of the event, nor was a report filed by the driver. He said that current regulations state that a driver should call in any incident that might cause a delay, so he, too, is stumped about what went on and why.
For his part, reader S., who provided us with the initial account of the incident and who insists he did his best to report it to SFPD, says that in his initial call to SFPD, he was told that he couldn’t get a case number since he wasn’t the victim, and therefore couldn’t be filing the incident report — he’d just be providing notes as a witness.
S says he spoke to an Officer Massey, and provided us with that officer’s phone number, but neither the Appeal nor SFPD’s Dangerfield have been able to get a response from that officer. “We want things to be right” said the dogged Dangerfield, who encouraged S to contact the Office of Citizen Complaints to determine why his report went nowhere.
With the information readers like S provided us, MTA spokesperson Rose says he’ll work to get the onboard video of the event, and said that if he could, he’d provide it to the Appeal to see, as well.
“We want to run a clean shop, and Muni wants to run a clean shop, but if no one calls in what can we do about it?” asked Dangerfield. While in this particular case, someone did indeed make a report, the sentiment remains a valid one.
So, y’all, let’s report those Muni crimes, and keep us posted on what you report, so we can make sure your report got reported, and…sigh. You know what I mean.
