Mother arrested in front of child by Met over bus fare (that she had paid!)

[TERFinTheHouse]

Tw: upsetting content

twitter.com/saskia_cole/status/1682705268721737728?s=46&t=p6GESSn09HWHVXYgTLIbJg

Why was this woman arrested like this!?! Her poor child!

According to other Tweeters, she had paid her bus fare BTW.

Yeah, right. And the security in those handhelds is watertight, is it?

Well if you've paid with a bank card in the first place then you can't be concerned about security. They're all working with the same data!

I'm about as white, physically and culturally, as a white person can be, I can't even claim to have any close friends who are black, yet even I am aware it's extremely unlikely this passer-by was falsely claiming to be biologically related to the woman by referring to her as "sister" - and you'd hope the local police would be aware too. As I understand it (though willing to be corrected) it's a wider kinship thing, an expression of solidarity. You might as well accuse a priest of lying because he called a parishioner "my son" when you know perfectly well he never met the man's mother. Sorry if I've stepped on any toes with that attempted explanation. Not sure it was really necessary either...

Funny, years ago I'd have been all on the side of the police and the "well why didn't she just show it" but have seen too many examples of police being overbearing, especially towards certain ethnic groups. I'm also comfortably aware that being middle-aged, middle-class and white I'm very likely to be given the benefit of the doubt in these scenarios which others aren't. So maybe the woman was being awkward on purpose. I don't think that's been proven at this point and also agree with those saying the action taken was still excessive unless, for example, she'd assaulted the inspector, which nobody is claiming.

p.s. I quoted @BCCoach in support of their post as it's possible the person they were replying to was genuinely uninformed, although to be fair obtuse is quite likely.

@Anniegetyourgun but how is being detained/arrested excessive, if she was hurling abuse at the inspectors and then also at the police and refusing to show a ticket? Would you not question the intentions of this person and consider it a risk that she had such a bad overreaction to a simple request - what was she hiding/why was she refusing?

Or do you think the police are just supposed to take abuse, ignore the ticket inspector who she isn't showing her ticket to and has been abused - just because she has a child? Quite frankly I'd be very concerned as a police officer as to why she was subjecting her child to this scene instead of just showing her ticket. I have never ever seen a ticket inspector treat a black person differently than a white when asking for a ticket. You just show your ticket, its not a difficult concept. If you're on a flight and a passenger refuses to show their boarding pass - are you going to sit there thinking it's all above board and security should just ignore it?

If all it takes is a woman to use her child as ammunition to hurl abuse, commit an offence (refusing to show her ticket) and put other passengers and bus workers in the fray - we might as well have a law that no mothers can ever be questioned, arrested or convicted. If this was a young man, no one would be kicking up a fuss.

Well, nobody's managed to steal my card details in twenty years, not from the Oyster or since they introduced bank contactless payments/pay by phone. They'd certainly have had the opportunity, what with that being a full two decades.

There's no need to be abusive.

Like most people I commute, so a train twice a day. Normal amount of train travel for any commuter.

It's usually pretty obvious from clothing, gadgets, accent, etc. etc. what someone's socioeconomic background is. This is especially true of the upper classes. If you're genuinely suggesting that there's no way to tell if an Eton student in expensive clothes, latest gadgets, talking in RP about going to his dad's chalet in Zermatt has money or not, then you're either intentionally being goady or simply not British at all.

Mumsnet has had hundreds, probably thousands of threads over the years discussing the link between class and appearance, the whole of Style and Beauty would vanish if people weren't obsessed with looking MC or looking posh.

For those claiming the woman deliberately staged an event she knew would result in police roughing her up and subjecting her to false arrest so that she could get the fame and money you for some reason are convinced all black people receive when they "play the race card", please explain the logic hole in your thinking:

The only way she could have staged this is if she knew ahead of time that police would get violent in response to someone getting off a bus and walking away with their Oyster card in their hand.

Which would never happen to a white person.

You're pretty much telling on yourself here, that you think black people deserve to be arrested and treated with violence anytime they're not compliant.

And you clearly believe ticket inspectors and police deserve to be abused for just doing their jobs. In that video, if the police officer arresting her was a smaller woman or man, the way she's resisting the arrest so aggressively would hurt their wrists and arms. Police officers often get nails dug into their wrists which you obviously won't ever see on social media. The only job where the public treats you like you're there to just be manhandled and abuse.

All because she was asked to show her ticket. But yes, let's make it a race issue and act like it's perfectly normal for someone to treat the inspectors and police as sub humans IN FRONT OF HER SON.

Would you not question the intentions of this person and consider it a risk that she had such a bad overreaction to a simple request - what was she hiding/why was she refusing?

The only thing she could possibly have been hiding was that she was a £1.75 fare dodger! (She wasn’t). Maybe she’s had dozens of ‘simple requests’ in the past, maybe she or one of her family has been badly treated by the police, maybe she’d had a bad day. If the police can’t de-escalate a situation involving a mother with her child, whose only suspected offence is fare-dodging, I despair. I can see why there are so many awful things which hapoen when police have any contact with young black males, who are subject to even more outrageous stereotyping.

If you’re black, or female, fleeing the police is not an irrational response, given the amount of violence that white male police officers (particularly in the Met) have perpetrated against black people and women.

but how is being detained/arrested excessive, if she was hurling abuse at the inspectors and then also at the police and refusing to show a ticket? Would you not question the intentions of this person and consider it a risk that she had such a bad overreaction to a simple request - what was she hiding/why was she refusing?

how are handcuffs necessary when there are so many plods actually there? are they all incompetent nincompoops who can't imagine a) why someone might be hurling abuse and b) what the optics are (regardless of if they are right or wrong)?

Couldn't they have just kept standing in front of her? Are they all so hideously useless at their jobs we need to fire them all and rehire?

People overreact all the time. The police are supposed to calm things down. In this case all they appeared to do was calm things up.

Are they all so hideously useless at their jobs we need to fire them all and rehire?

Well, this is the Met. we’re talking about. Again.

Don't be so ridiculous. She was de arrested because she finally proved that she had a ticket. Do you think anyone who’s arrested and also happens to be black is being dealt with by someone who’s racist? I’m absolutely certain that both misogyny and racism runs through the Met, but am also certain that doesn’t mean every PC is racist and misogynistic. Get a fucking grip!

😂😂😂😂😂

But you CAN get tickets. Just because you might not buy them doesn’t mean they're not available.

I don't get MN at all (I know it's not a monolith). So often when someone has said that their DH, or mum, or child, or boss or someone they know or a complete stranger started shouting at someone - so often there are a whole load of "you don't know what's going on in their life, cut them some slack" replies.

In this instance it is not beyond the bounds of possiblity that this woman is an arse. It is also not beyond the bounds of possibility that she was racially targetted and it's not the first time and this was the time she snapped. Whatever the reason - handcuffs and heavy handed policing wasn't the answer. In fact it so very rarely is.

Your contempt for men and women who are dealing with aggression and abuse every single day to keep the public safe is despicable. Do you have to do a job where you risk catching Hep C when you try to arrest people who scratch, bite and break skin? No, so maybe you will understand why there is protocol around arrests to protect the officers and public. No one could calm the woman down - she was off her head, abusing ticket inspectors, abusing the police, stopping the bus service - if she'd been a white woman you'd probably think she was drunk or coked out.

Have you tried to restrain and arrest a kicking, screaming woman? They absolutely needed handcuffs because she WASN'T GOING WILLINGLY and getting increasingly violent and abusive. Having multiple officers is a safety measure to protect the officers when someone is as aggressive as this woman was. There are signs in every station in the country that abuse against staff will not be tolerated - what do you think that means?? Do you know how she abused the ticket inspector, what she said or what she threatened, what she threatened the police officers with - you know nothing other than what some bored twat on the streets is saying in a video he took that doesn't show any of her abuse. And the Met are far too decent to release the CCTV footage of her antics on the bus.

She wasted a whole bunch of police resources, delayed the bus service, delayed the passengers because she couldn't be bothered to show her ticket - she's just an arsehole. She doesn't even have an explanation for why she wouldn't. And if you'd been on a bus or train with her trying to get to work and watched her kick off - you would not be anywhere near as sympathetic.

If someone is so triggered by being asked to show a bus ticket to an inspector - they shouldn't be travelling on the bus! Rules and laws don't change just because of your personal experience - what an entitled way to view the world. Refusing to show your ticket is an offence, end of. She probably would have gotten away with it if she hadn't turned abusive.

There is no justification for abusing the ticket inspector. None. No justification for abusing the police who showed up at the ticket inspector's request. No justification for resisting arrest. Her antics wasted police time and caused a lot of trauma for everyone involved, particularly her son.

Why would you get a paper ticket on a London bus? You use oyster / contactless, or show a paper travel card. They haven't accepted cash and given tickets in years.

ah @Ecclesfreckles i have contempt for the sexist, misogynist ones.
I think the ones who can't de-escalate a situation with a lone women, at the very least, in need of further training.

If it upsets you? why is that? because you're one of the useless ones, or you're not reporting the sexist racist ones?

to be clear - there is no justification for shouting and swearing at people doing their jobs. That it happens under some circumstances is understandable.

You got all that from a short clip some dude on the street took of only a section of the entire incident? Ok....

And she wasn't a lone woman was she - a group of pedestrians showed up to escalate the situation that she clearly used to her advantage to get off. The minute the public get involved, the only safe option is to take the person away or it will be a public order incident. But someone who's hard wired to think all women are good, and all male police officers are bad is not capable of a reasonable argument.

But you CAN get tickets.

Not on a London bus, you can’t.

oh @Ecclesfreckles no i don't get my mistrust of the police from one short clip. Whyever would you think that?

But someone who's hard wired to think all women are good, and all male police officers are bad is not capable of a reasonable argument.

are you talking about me? are you in the police? Don't be daft. I don't think anything of the sort. And nothing i have ever written here, not even on this thread, would lead anyone to believe that.