A.R.T. – THE MYTH OF SAFETY

The City of Albuquerque has committed to spending $70 million on a project called, “Albuquerque Rapid Transit,” or “ART.”  That $70 million is, in my opinion, a conservative figure; I’ll be amazed if it’s not twice that.  The project consists of tearing up Central Avenue, the supposed business heart of the city, and running an automated bus line down the middle of the street.  It will run from the east side of town, through the edge of the War Zone, past the above-ground cesspool that is UNM, through the velvet-lined rat’s nest of Downtown, and up into the haven of gangs and slave traders on the west side.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to ride that?  I attend church at a site on the northwest side of the city, near Cottonwood Mall, for those who are familiar.  We are diagonally across town from the War Zone, and about 15 miles away.  There is a bus stop across the street from our building, and I noticed last summer, after I was assigned the task of security for the building and our members, that the arrival of vagrants, panhandlers, drunks, shakedown artists, and hookers coincided with the bus schedule.  I discussed my observation with a handful of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County LEO’s, and they confirmed my suspicion:  bus stops are known hot spots in the predator distribution network.

Crime and deviant behavior of every imaginable sort is an integral part of the everyday flavor of riding a bus in Albuquerque.  Everybody knows it.  The primary victims of all this bad behavior are those who can’t afford a car, or who are physically constrained from driving.  That has not kept the mayor [I spit on the ground at his name] from bragging that he’s doing something to help those citizens who are least able to help themselves.  (The fact that the city is short over 150 police officers, and that $70 million would help alleviate that shortage, is beside the point.  Those cops probably wouldn’t vote for him, anyway.)

So the mayor and city council have spent a pretty penny creating a high-tech feed trough for the city’s predators, and stocked it with the poor and frail of our city.  Now, they are bragging that they are installing wonderful, infallible security measures in the feed trough:  911 call buttons, a couple dozen cameras on the stops and cameras in each bus, and a few dozen security police who will randomly ride the busses around, supposedly shooing away the neer-do-wells.  The net result is that, having blown 70 million bucks on this target-rich environment, they are now going to spend several million more on security measures, and, as we have seen today, a bunch more – probably in the millions – on an advertising campaign to convince the prey the security measures will keep them safe.

What a load of horse apples.  A cruel, cynical, wasteful, self-serving bunch of horse apples.

I’d like to talk about the reality and tactics of the security measures, because encouraging my neighbors to think tactically will be of immeasurably greater value to them than my eloquent, sarcastic evisceration of a pack of idiots.  First, I want to explain the many fallacies of the city’s dreamland security schemes.

1. CAMERAS IN THE COACHES

Devices to record, in blurry, shaking, indecipherable images, the fact that something happened, and that apparently, someone did it to someone else.  How many security camera videos have you seen in which it was possible to identify people or analyze their actions?  How many of these thugs are smart enough to listen to the ad campaign about the cameras and either shield themselves from them or disable them?  And most of all, even if those cameras produced crystal-clear images, the best they can accomplish is to help the police find the person responsible for destroying the life of another.  Sorry, Mayor, but your cameras won’t bring back the dead or heal the violated.  They are laughably worthless and ridiculously easy to defeat.

2. CAMERAS AT THE STOPS

These suffer all the same shortcomings as the cameras on the coaches, with additional absurdity of not being at most likely scene of the crime.

3. ROVING SECURITY GUARDS

Ah, now here we have a real solution!  Because no one is smart enough to lay low until the “Random guard” gets off the bus, or turns his back, or is overwhelmed by a half-dozen Antifa freedom fighters.  [Image of me, gagging on my own sarcasm]  The claim is that these guards will shoo away the undesirables and evil doers before they can cause mischief.  Holy side view, Batman!  That sounds like profiling!  How in the name of all that is municipal are these guards supposed to know who is going to misbehave until they misbehave, at which point, how are the guards going to be able to do anything other than mop up the blood and notify the next-of-kin?  I’m not busting on the guards!  I’m sure they’ll do their very best, and a few of them will probably pay for their integrity with their well-being or even their lives.  It is the idea – the doctrine – the system – that is making me absolutely slobberingly nuts!  How many college degrees does it take to come up with something so blindingly stupid?

4. UNADVERTISED SPECIAL

You can bet your bippy the new busses, like all those before, will be “Gun Free Zones.”  In other words, they will be carefully designed to put the weak, frail, elderly, and physically disadvantaged in immediate proximity with a concentrated population of predators, and deliberately – may I say criminally – deprive them of the one meaningful tool with which they might defend themselves.  There is only one way to prevent crimes before they happen, and that’s with a population of armed victims.  I would dearly love to see the city offer free passage on ART to those legally carrying concealed firearms.  Concealed firearms make everyone in the population a wild card.  CCW holders are the most well-behaved segment of the American population, with the possible exception of the Mennonites.

5. DEFENSIVE TACTICS

I promised some of this.

1. First, stay off the damned bus!
2. If you have to ride, don’t ride alone.
3. Pay attention to everyone and everything around you.
4. Profile without mercy! In a potentially dangerous setting like a bus or on a street near a bus stop, you don’t have time to ask a person about his moral or religious convictions; you don’t have time to meet his parents or plumb the depths of his soul.  If somebody gives you the creeps, get away from him or her!
5. Don’t count on cameras or guards to keep you safe. Be alert!
6. This one drives me nuts: keep your blasted phone in your pocket when you are out in public! Having your nose buried in your phone and earbuds blocking out the sounds of approaching danger is like chumming for charcaradon bipedalii (that’s two-legged sharks).
7. KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF YOUR PHONE AND YOUR EARS FREE OF ENCUMBERANCES! This one is worth repeating.
8. The danger is not just on the bus! Bus stops bring together people, both prey and predators.  The predator knows where you will be and when you’ll be there.  He probably even knows which way you’ll be facing.  Break up your pattern and routine as much as you can.  Do not for a second believe that you aren’t being watched and profiled, yourself.
9. When you get off the bus, be extra vigilant, and watch for people at a distance. Just as a predator knows when you are getting on, he’ll watch you go home or to your work, make note of your route and habits, and set his trap.
10. There is an upside for 8 and 9 above:  Just as bus stops concentrate prey, they also concentrate predators.  Especially if you are somewhere on the Central corridor, you can just about bet that in any group of a dozen or more people, there is at least one who would misbehave if given the chance.  This is where alertness will pay a huge dividend; watch the crowd at the bus stops.  The predators have to get on the bus at bus stops, right?  Use that opportunity to notice people and profile hell out of them.  Trust me:  profiling someone in your own mind doesn’t hurt them one bit.
11. Watch the guards. One of the most dangerous windows will be immediately after a guard disembarks, and before another one comes on.  Of course, in order to notice such things, YOU’LL HAVE TO KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF YOUR PHONE!

This is not meant to turn anyone into a twitching paranoid.  We have to live our lives.  We have to go places by the best means possible.  We can’t let the very real possibility of being attacked keep us from living our lives.  But we don’t have to walk around blindly, either.  The best way to avoid living in fear is to be aware of danger and take measures to avoid it.  The great majority of people we meet on the streets are harmless, or even wonderful, but there are some who are not.  Recognition of the existence of either type does not deny the existence of the other.  Be alert and take common-sense precautions.  Those who love you need you home safe.