Mission Local reports:
A man named Michael jumped onto the 24th Street BART tracks just as a Daly City-bound train was approaching. Wearing a shirt that said Viva la Revolucion and yelling “You have the power,” he said he was occupying the tracks because he was sick of sleeping on the streets for six years.
Witnesses on the platform began waving their arms frantically at the driver, and the train came to a screeching halt just within a foot of hitting him. [link]
They spend a few minutes trying to talk him into climbing back out, he explains that he won’t leave until TV cameras show up, so they turn off the third rail and jump down there and cuff him and haul him away.
Let’s zoom in on the cop with the giant weapon and the bystander snapping pics:
Is that some kind of tazer rifle?
I think its probably one of those bean-bag guns. That was my assumption at least.
Yep, orange = non-lethal. At one point, they weren’t all orange, and uh… mistakes were made (not by SFPD to my knowledge, but other PDs).
s/non-lethal/LESS-lethal
Before he went nuts on BART this guy came into Sugarlump and started yelling about people needed to love America or GTFO. He started a fight with one of the people who told him to leave. He was not well, obvs.
I was walking down to the platform just when he had jumped onto the track. It was genuinely terrifying to hear the train approaching and people running for the station conductor, or shouting (or standing there and taking pictures).
Michael was very obviously not well. It was honestly sad to see someone who is not taken care of in the way they need to be. I was also surprised–and still am a little thrown as evidenced by my snide parenthetical comment above–by how many people stood around taking pictures. I understand it’s tough to see and people want to distance themselves emotionally from something that’s difficult to process, but part of me feels like entertainment today makes it difficult for people to differentiate between sickness and entertainment.
After the train stopped and it was clear that, though sick, Michael was safe for the time being, he did have the best comment: he turned to the train and said, “You almost hit me.”
He said “You almost hit me?” bwahahaha
Football is a lame past time… turn the stadium into one big crack-house. Any one can be let in, but they have to go through rehab to get out. They could turn the field into a vegetable garden, but they wouldnt.
Thank you for not linking this story to the Occupy SF movement, which is what some other sites have done. Just because this guy was apparently shouting about “occupying” the tracks, he shouldn’t get to borrow any legitimacy associated with those protests.
I think he deserves exactly the same legitimacy as Occupy SF (Oakland, etc.) — and vice versa.
… which nicely demonstrates that you don’t understand the Occupy protests in the least.
GG: Well said.
Now he doesn’t have to sleep on the streets anymore! Perhaps someone should let him know once he gets out of jail that he can apply for free public housing at the G.A. office on Mission. (Just blocks from where he staged his protest) Bummer he lived on the streets for 6 years, when all he had to do was apply for public housing! Kind of shocking that nobody told him about that.
I doubt this guy will be spending much time in jail, more likely three days in SF General’s locked ward. I’m not sure that’s really all that bad, maybe he’ll get some help. Punishing him serves no purpose – he obviously isn’t able to pay any fines, and jail time for being crazy and holding up the commute doesn’t seem especially necessary.
do you have any idea what the Section 8 process is like? it can literally take years of paperwork to get approved and be placed on a waiting list.
Yes I do know what it is like. I have been there. I said NOTHING about Section 8. Section 8 isn’t even accepting new applicants right now, and there is a 20 year wait for people that ARE on the list. I said PUBLIC HOUSING. You can apply for it at the G.A. office. It is not a federal program. Public housing is offered by the City of San Francisco. Granted you will most likely start out in a shelter, but eventually you can move up to a 1-room studio on 6th street with a shared bathroom and no kitchen. Not glamorous at all, but better than living on the streets. Stay on the public housing list long enough, and you can eventually end up in a very nice apartment in a high-rise building, with a view, and a full bath and kitchen in the apartment.
NOPE NOPE NOPE. He would have to start out in a homeless shelter. Do you know what happens in homeless shelters? I stayed in one for a week when I found myself homeless before giving up on getting housing:
-Drunk idiots fell on me at all hours of the night
-I had weapons pulled on me
-I was fucking raped
Fuck homeless shelters. (and just because this guy is a man does not mean he’s not susceptible to being sexually assaulted in one of those places)
Yea. All you have to do is apply and they give you a comfy place to call your own. UM, NO.
Yes I do know what it is like. I have been there. I said NOTHING about Section 8. Section 8 isn’t even accepting new applicants right now, and there is a 20 year wait for people that ARE on the list. I said PUBLIC HOUSING. You can apply for it at the G.A. office. It is not a federal program. Public housing is offered by the City of San Francisco. Granted you will most likely start out in a shelter, but eventually you can move up to a studio on 6th street with a shared bathroom. Not glamorous at all, but better than the streets. Stay on the public housing list long enough, and you eventually end up in a very nice apartment in a high-rise building somewhere in town, with a full bath and kitchen in the apartment.
…all of which is pointless if you are mentally ill and can’t get it together to go to a city office, fill out paperwork, follow up on your status, etc. — which, unfortunately, is the case for many homeless people in SF (generally speaking, not necessarily this guy).
Yes, you are absolutely right. Unfortunately there are many of them roaming the streets. The police call them “5150′s”. They are in and out of jail and hospitals all the time, but I doesn’t seem like anyone is trying to help them to apply for the assistance they need. Don’t you just love bureaucracy?
HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN
…have fun, folks.
That is scary! Poor guy! Well now I know what happens when you put your ass on the 3rd rail… you get a nice seat.
It says in the article that they turned off the third rail. If you touch the metal under the protective cover of the third-rail (while it is on) and one of the other rails at the same time, they will most likely be scraping you off the rails with a putty knife. There was a guy who just had a face-transplant recently in Boston, whose face was vaporized when he fell onto the tracks and his face hit the third rail.
He was in front of Philz earlier, someone called 911 but didn’t meet the firetruck to tell them why they called… I think it was for this dude, who was pretending to grab asses and walking into traffic and generally being provocative (couple hogs he egged on didn’t even blink). I said something to the EMT about mutual benefits of taking care of the guy, but they pretended they didn’t hear me behind their slick bladerunner glasses.
So the show went on…