World News
L.A. city bus driver was pushed, punched by passenger, video shows
A female Los Angeles city bus driver was attacked by a woman trying to ride DASH on Sunday — just two days after hundreds of Metro bus drivers staged a sick-out protesting safety concerns.
In a video captured by OnScene.TV, the driver can be heard telling the passenger to get out of the bus as the woman reaches over a protective barrier. The driver swings open the barrier door and shoves her off, before the two spill into the street — near LAPD’s Newton Division — on Central Avenue at Jefferson Boulevard.
The scuffle happened around midday, according to Los Angeles police. Video shows the passenger pushing and punching the bus driver, who defends herself — at one point kicking the woman in an apparent attempt to get her to back off. Witnesses said the fracas came after the female passenger refused to pay the 50-cent fare, KTLA reported.
The encounter did not appear to last for more than a minute, and the driver was treated at the scene, police said. But it underscored the challenges facing bus drivers and transit agencies.
Bus drivers across the county have been dealing with increasing hostility from passengers. Assaults on transit workers have tripled over the last 15 years, according to research from the Urban Institute. Between 2008 and 2022 federal data show the number of assaults resulting in deaths or medical transport rose to 492 from 168 nationwide.
Although Metro drivers have faced several high-profile assaults in recent months, the DASH system, which is operated by the city in 27 communities including downtown Los Angeles, has largely stayed out of the spotlight.
The woman was arrested but not yet booked as of 10:30 p.m. Sunday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The DASH bus service feeds into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s bus and train network, where operators say they are worried about being targets. Earlier this year, a Metro bus driver was hijacked by a person carrying an airsoft gun, then another was stabbed as passengers watched.
The recent fatal stabbing of a security guard returning from her night shift on a Metro subway has spurred the Metro board to consider facial recognition technology and fare gates to help prevent similar attacks.
But unionized Metro train and bus operators have criticized Metro for failing to respond quickly and forcefully enough to violence on the system.
World News
Texas crime victims liaison pleads guilty to human smuggling with county vehicle
A Texas crime victims coordinator who was employed by the Starr County District Attorney’s Office has pleaded guilty to using a county vehicle to smuggle immigrants into the United States.
Bernice Garza pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to transport undocumented people within the United States, according to a report from KRGV.
Two others, Magali Rosa and Juan Antonio Charles, were also arrested in connection with the investigation and have pleaded guilty to human smuggling charges, according to the report.
Garza was arrested in December 2022 after a traffic stop in Victoria County noted that the vehicle registered with the county was making “numerous unauthorized trips to the Houston area,” the criminal complaint said.
Magali Rosa was the driver of the vehicle, according to police, while Garza and Charles were among the passengers in the vehicle.
Police say Rosa tried to argue that Garza was the Starr County district attorney during the stop, though she later confessed to making over 40 smuggling trips from Rio Grande City to Houston in the government vehicle.
FOX NEWS CREW WITNESSES DRAMATIC HUMAN SMUGGLING BUSTS BY TEXAS AUTHORITIES
“This investigation is an example of no one being above the law, and our office taking swift action in eliminating public corruption,” the DA’s office said in a statement after the arrests.
Garza was soon terminated from the DA’s office, while the four migrants who were in the vehicle at the time of the stop were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol.
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Sentencing for Garza and Charles was set for Sept. 28, the reporting notes, while sentencing for Magali Rosa is set for June 27.
World News
At Chaotic Rally in Brooklyn, Police Violently Confront Protesters
A large protest in Brooklyn against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza erupted into a chaotic scene on Saturday, as the police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and at times confronted them violently.
In videos posted on social media, officers can be seen punching at least three people who were prone on the ground at the demonstration in the Bay Ridge neighborhood. The aggression was corroborated by witnesses. Another protester who was filming the police was tackled and arrested. A police spokesman declined to comment on the officers using force on protesters.
The police said Sunday that 40 people were arrested. They have not released details on the charges the protesters face.
“I saw police indiscriminately grabbing people off the street and the sidewalk,” said Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of Within Our Lifetime, an activist group led by Palestinians that organized the demonstration. “They were grabbing people at random.”
According to the Police Department’s patrol guide, officers must use “only the reasonable force necessary to gain control or custody of a subject.”
In recent years, Within Our Lifetime has put on an annual mid-May rally in Bay Ridge, a neighborhood with a large Arab population, to commemorate what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe” — when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s founding in 1948.
Given the war in Gaza and months of protests in New York, this year’s protest was charged from the start. It started at 2 p.m. at the intersection of Fifth and Bay Ridge Avenues. Within about 25 minutes, a large group of officers arrived and warned protesters to get onto the sidewalk. Those who remained in the street would be arrested, the police told them.
From there, the event alternated between protest marches and standoffs with the police. In one video taken by Katie Smith, an independent journalist, a police commander in a white shirt delivers at least three punches to a person lying on the pavement. In another video she recorded, an officer punches a man who is on the ground at least six times and a white-shirted commander aims a kick at the man, though it is not possible to see if it landed.
In a separate instance filmed by another independent journalist, Talia Jane, an officer flings a protester against a signpost and then hurls him to the pavement, where he is pinned by two officers as he is punched by a third.
The footage of the police, including at least one commander, pummeling protesters recalled some of the N.Y.P.D. conduct caught on video at the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. The city ended up paying $13 million to settle a class-action suit brought by those protesters.
In a video of the Saturday protest posted on Twitch, half a dozen people could be seen filming a group of police officers and commanders walking on Bay Ridge Avenue. A police commander grabbed the nearest one, followed by two more commanders and a scrum of blue-shirted officers.
The protester was shoved to the ground, handcuffed and arrested. Other people in the crowd continued recording the event.
Those arrested were led to police vans and driven to the headquarters in Manhattan. A light rain began to fall, and by 8 p.m. the protest had dispersed.
Sabir Hasko contributed reporting.
World News
Virgin Trains targets West Coast in return to rail
Virgin Group has applied for a licence to run trains on the route it lost to Avanti in 2019.
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