Bus driver suspended after fight with passenger

Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2012-10-13 01:21

Incredible story... a female bus driver was harassed physically and verbally by a male passenger who appeared drunk and/or crazy, and after trying to deal with him verbally, and after repeated threats and assaults such as choking and spitting, she hit him and threw him off the bus physically. Then he re-boarded the bus and assaulted the driver again. And can you believe it, she declined to press charges against him for his outrageous behavior. Now, strangely enough, the bus company (Greater Cleveland RTA) she works for has suspended her and denounced her actions despite him putting her and her passengers in danger. I think this is nuts. Click here to go to Change.org to sign a petition expressing your dissatisfaction to the bus company for their difficult-to-understand actions. What you say, the link doesn't work? You're right, it doesn't. That's because it isn't a hyperlink. That's because there is no such petition. That's because the foregoing story is not true. However if you re-read the story and reverse the genders, the story will in fact be true. Read it here. GCRTA contact info is posted in one of the comments below, if you would like to let them know how you feel. Excerpt:

'OCTOBER 12--The Cleveland bus driver who delivered an uppercut to an unruly female passenger told cops that he struck the woman after she grabbed his throat and spit in his face as he was driving, according to police reports.
...
Video of the fight (see below) went viral online this week, prompting RTA officials to suspend Hughes, a 22-year veteran, and characterize his behavior as "absolutely unacceptable."

When cops responded to the stopped bus around 4 PM, Hughes and three passengers described Lane (pictured at right) as the incident's aggressor. Hughes told cops that Lane initially boarded the bus without paying, claiming, "I left my bookbag."

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Comments

Impunity, indeed. Looks like a goodly number of people are suggesting these days that men can assault women with impunity, but even when defending themselves against assault, who gets arrested, prosecuted, loses their job, etc.? The cognitive dissonance feminists (and indeed many who don't much think of themselves as feminists) must live within must certainly be mind-numbing, to so create a reality of their own as utterly divorced from the truth as it is.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2012-10-13 01:59

The GM's email address is gm@gcrta.org, according to http://www.riderta.com/customerservice/#contacts. The GM's page is here and his name is Joseph Calabrese. As always, please be polite and stick to the facts, but make your point, too.

My email went like this:

Dear Mr. Calabrese:

As discussed at this article, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/cleveland-bus-punch-report-687451 , bus driver Artis Hughes was suspended by GCRTA for, in essence, defending himself from a passenger who was acting in a violent and depraved fashion, endangering him and his passengers. Yet instead of congratulating him on taking the necessary steps to protect himself and the safety of his passengers, he has been suspended from his job. This was done even after he declined to press assault charges against the passenger who assaulted him. (Why the passenger was not arrested and taken into custody by the police is hard to understand as well, but that is a different matter).

Based on what the news has reported about the incident as related by eye witnesses, it seems clear that Hughes was acting not just within his rights but also within his responsibilities to himself and his passengers. By in essence condoning the passenger's behavior by failing to stand up for and with their driver, GCRTA endangers their other drivers and the general public by setting a precedent that in essence says, it's all right for you to board a bus without paying a fare, then harass and assault the driver, then when struck by said driver and thrown off the bus, to insist that you in fact were the victim. This is a prescription for chaos.

Finally, based on the video shown here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/viral-video/cleveland-bus-punch-736901 , viewers can see that Hughes was not himself being very nice to the passenger as she unleashed a verbal tirade against him. This is not easy to watch, as both people were repeatedly hurling insults and racial slurs at one another (albeit they are of the same ethnic group, still, it is unseemly and disturbing), and the blow Hughes delivered to her was solidly placed. The question the viewer has to ask him- or herself is this: If the genders had been reversed, would the GCRTA be siding with the passenger in this matter as they are now? Society has a very demonstrable double-standard as regards self-defense of person, allowing women to engage in even unprovoked physical assaults of men (as the passenger reportedly did) and usually be excused from doing so, while men are not even viewed as being allowed to defend themselves or even others against violence from women. If a 130-lb. man assaults a 200-lb. man, and the 200-lb. man strikes the 130-lb. man in response, the law upholds the 200-lb. man's actions. However if the 130-lb. man is a woman instead, the law will not uphold the 200-lb. man's right to self-defense, simply because of the gender difference. As some of the bus passengers in the video demonstrate, this double-standard is openly declared and presumed to be morally justified. The truth is that if the female passenger in this case had been male, no one would be complaining about the contents of the video (except to say perhaps that the racial slurs were disturbing), or the bus driver. Likewise, if the unruly and violent passenger had been male and the driver female, she would certainly be getting praised from all quarters for her actions.

I ask GCRTA to stand up for the right of their drivers to defend themselves and their passengers from violent and unruly people on their buses regardless of the sexes of said people, and to be consistent in the upholding of any law which allows for their bus drivers use whatever force they deem necessary to protect themselves or their passengers. Finally, I ask that GCRTA not buy into or condone sexist double-standards in the handling of personnel-related matters. If GCRTA is going to criticize the driver's behavior, I believe it ought to be limited to his use of racial slurs even when confronted by the use of these slurs against him. At the same time, GCRTA should recognize that such language is inherently provocative and even the most self-disciplined of people may not be able to remember not to sink to that level of discourse under such provocation.

Sincerely yours,

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2012-10-13 02:24