An Oakland woman was stabbed to death on a San Francisco Bay Area BART platform Sunday night. This was the second BART related homicide of the weekend and the third fatal assault over five-days.
John Lee Cowell, 27, is the primary suspect in a double stabbing Sunday night that killed one woman and critically injured another at the MacArthur station. He has a history of violent crimes and homelessness.
Cowell is a transient based in Concord with a history of arrests. Cowell had arrests for assault with a deadly weapon and robbery. In 2016, the Kaiser Medical hospital in Richmond sought a restraining order against Cowell after he threatened to kill an employee. Cowell spent two years in prison after being sentenced for armed robbery and was released on parole four months ago.
He also had prior arrests in Alameda County for one case involving petty theft and another involving misdemeanor vandalism and misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance.
The Saturday Bay Fair attack victim was a 47-year-old homeless man, Don Stevens. Surveillance video revealed that Stevens was on the station platform around 1:20 a.m. Saturday when a suspect punched Stevens on the side of his head. As he fell, Stevens’ head hit the cement platform.
Abdul Bey got into a fight with Pittsburg resident Gerald Bisbee, 51, on July 18. Bisbee left the train with a bloody lip and small cut to the back of his knee. Bisbee later died from an infection to his knee.
Reported BART Crime Statistics
A total of 137 violent crimes were reported on BART through April compared with 150 for the same period in 2017. There were 92 robberies reported through April compared with 110 at the same point last year. While overall violent crime is down, aggravated assaults increased from 34 through April of 2017 to 43 for the same time frame this year.
Through April, BART police made 148 felony arrests and 410 misdemeanor arrests. That’s a 16.5% increase in felony arrests.
There is a BART Crimes website which tracks far more incidents of crime on BART. BART Crimes uses information scraped from daily emails and posted.
Homeless Problem in the Bay Area
In 2016, data shows that San Francisco had the second highest homeless population in the USA.
San Francisco leads the Bay Area in homelessness. They have nearly twice the number of homeless as San Jose and three times the number in Oakland. But statistics go beyond the Bay Area.
A graph shows San Francisco ranks second to New York in homelessness. There are 795 people per 100,000 residents. New York has 887, followed by Seattle with 487, and Philadelphia with 384.
In 2018, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said 7,500 people are currently homeless on the streets of San Francisco.
There are significant issues of mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction in the homeless population.
These problems then are on BART as well. It is common to see people injecting themselves with needles on BART. Harassment or encounters with transients and vagrants occurs on many BART rides.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Is this story just for click bait? What does this have to do with the NextBigFuture?
And people say Israel is dangerous. San Francisco needs to have armed Police on every train and bus just like in Jerusalem, Israel to prevent such attacks. At lest the trains are not being blown up.
Is this story just for click bait? What does this have to do with the NextBigFuture?
And people say Israel is dangerous. San Francisco needs to have armed Police on every train and bus just like in Jerusalem Israel to prevent such attacks. At lest the trains are not being blown up.
Brian was…might still be…a regular BART commuter from the Walnut Creek Station.
Most of the bad things are happening on the other side of the bay…
That’s crazy… some of these incidents happened in a station where BART police were present. If you want to spend some money on security, raise the wages of the BART police so they can hire their way out of being understaffed. Also you could put in lots of 4K CCTV surveillance (note a lot of things happen to BART passengers near the stations too so maybe the CCTVs should cover a radius of several blocks around the station) so there would be no more fuzzy photos shown on late night news in Bay Area asking people to identify somebody from an impossibly bad image. The first time the local news show an image that looks like it was taken in a portrait studio, certain bad characters will figure that BART is to be avoided.
I believe Brian lives in the Bay Area… but conflating all these issues into one posting is bit disturbing. BART security is a mess. They are understaffed and if some of their behavior in the not so distant past is any indication very poorly trained. Homelessness in SF has gotten out of hand. I think it’s at least in part linked to the obscene increase in housing costs brought on by Tech companies locating themselves in the city. Note, some of the Tech companies were lured to SF by tax breaks. San Francisco is trying to do something about homelessness by increasing the resources dedicated to serving the needs of the homeless and getting them off the streets into housing but this is a long term uphill battle.
[i]What does this have to do with NextBigFuture[/i]? Signs-of-the-times, boy-o. 3 deaths in 1 week on BART’s premises is alarmingly high. Question is, what to do about it? BART is a public transportation system, and just like nearly-all similar systems around the world, it is very lightly policed and lightly “secured”. There are no metal-detectors at inlet gates. There aren’t canine sniffers and suspicious-persons real-time-video enhanced security pods. There aren’t even visible guards at most inlet stations. Just like the metros of virtually every city on this Dear Planet I’ve had the pleasure to use. An open system, without assigned seating, meant to move hundreds of thousands of people every day around the city efficiently, quickly and aiming for relatively-trouble-free comporting. So what to do? Could hire a few hundred (for BART) extra employees, or a similar number of rent-a-badge-and-gun private security agencies to substantially increase the level of comprehensive security meted out each hour at the scores of BART stations. Would that work? I don’t think so. The openness of the system and people’s individual opportunities to [i]“move around”[/i] lend it all nature of unregulatable consequence. In the end, I’m not coming up with a decent solution. [b]Goat[/b]Guy
It’s the entire Bay Area that has the problem. You can see the Hatian/Brazilian-like favelas made of tents and carboard shacks from riding on BART on the elevated portion from Fruitvale all the way to Union City. And the favelas are growing.Bluetard Zoning Madness = Sh*th0le Country status
Brian was…might still be…a regular BART commuter from the Walnut Creek Station.
Most of the bad things are happening on the other side of the bay…
That’s crazy… some of these incidents happened in a station where BART police were present. If you want to spend some money on security raise the wages of the BART police so they can hire their way out of being understaffed. Also you could put in lots of 4K CCTV surveillance (note a lot of things happen to BART passengers near the stations too so maybe the CCTVs should cover a radius of several blocks around the station) so there would be no more fuzzy photos shown on late night news in Bay Area asking people to identify somebody from an impossibly bad image. The first time the local news show an image that looks like it was taken in a portrait studio certain bad characters will figure that BART is to be avoided.
I believe Brian lives in the Bay Area… but conflating all these issues into one posting is bit disturbing. BART security is a mess. They are understaffed and if some of their behavior in the not so distant past is any indication very poorly trained.Homelessness in SF has gotten out of hand. I think it’s at least in part linked to the obscene increase in housing costs brought on by Tech companies locating themselves in the city. Note some of the Tech companies were lured to SF by tax breaks. San Francisco is trying to do something about homelessness by increasing the resources dedicated to serving the needs of the homeless and getting them off the streets into housing but this is a long term uphill battle.
[i]What does this have to do with NextBigFuture[/i]?Signs-of-the-times boy-o. 3 deaths in 1 week on BART’s premises is alarmingly high. Question is what to do about it? BART is a public transportation system and just like nearly-all similar systems around the world it is very lightly policed and lightly secured””. There are no metal-detectors at inlet gates. There aren’t canine sniffers and suspicious-persons real-time-video enhanced security pods. There aren’t even visible guards at most inlet stations. Just like the metros of virtually every city on this Dear Planet I’ve had the pleasure to use. An open system”” without assigned seating meant to move hundreds of thousands of people every day around the city efficiently quickly and aiming for relatively-trouble-free comporting. So what to do?Could hire a few hundred (for BART) extra employees or a similar number of rent-a-badge-and-gun private security agencies to substantially increase the level of comprehensive security meted out each hour at the scores of BART stations. Would that work?I don’t think so.The openness of the system and people’s individual opportunities to [i]“move around”[/i] lend it all nature of unregulatable consequence. In the end”” I’m not coming up with a decent solution.[b]Goat[/b]Guy”””””””
If I were a BART cop after the Mehserle Mess, I would just sit back and video tape the madness. Why stick my neck out?
It’s the entire Bay Area that has the problem. You can see the Hatian/Brazilian-like favelas made of tents and carboard shacks from riding on BART on the elevated portion from Fruitvale all the way to Union City. And the favelas are growing. Bluetard Zoning Madness = Sh*th0le Country status
If I were a BART cop after the Mehserle Mess I would just sit back and video tape the madness. Why stick my neck out?
What gets me down is when homeless people get on the bus and then ask the passengers for money for their fare.Most of the homeless I like. Some have obvious mental health problems, but most just want to be free to travel.
What gets me down is when homeless people get on the bus and then ask the passengers for money for their fare.Most of the homeless I like. Some have obvious mental health problems but most just want to be free to travel.
What gets me down is when homeless people get on the bus and then ask the passengers for money for their fare.Most of the homeless I like. Some have obvious mental health problems, but most just want to be free to travel.
If I were a BART cop after the Mehserle Mess, I would just sit back and video tape the madness. Why stick my neck out?
It’s the entire Bay Area that has the problem. You can see the Hatian/Brazilian-like favelas made of tents and carboard shacks from riding on BART on the elevated portion from Fruitvale all the way to Union City.
And the favelas are growing.
Bluetard Zoning Madness = Sh*th0le Country status
Brian was…might still be…a regular BART commuter from the Walnut Creek Station.
Most of the bad things are happening on the other side of the bay…
That’s crazy… some of these incidents happened in a station where BART police were present. If you want to spend some money on security, raise the wages of the BART police so they can hire their way out of being understaffed. Also you could put in lots of 4K CCTV surveillance (note a lot of things happen to BART passengers near the stations too so maybe the CCTVs should cover a radius of several blocks around the station) so there would be no more fuzzy photos shown on late night news in Bay Area asking people to identify somebody from an impossibly bad image. The first time the local news show an image that looks like it was taken in a portrait studio, certain bad characters will figure that BART is to be avoided.
I believe Brian lives in the Bay Area… but conflating all these issues into one posting is bit disturbing.
BART security is a mess. They are understaffed and if some of their behavior in the not so distant past is any indication very poorly trained.
Homelessness in SF has gotten out of hand. I think it’s at least in part linked to the obscene increase in housing costs brought on by Tech companies locating themselves in the city. Note, some of the Tech companies were lured to SF by tax breaks. San Francisco is trying to do something about homelessness by increasing the resources dedicated to serving the needs of the homeless and getting them off the streets into housing but this is a long term uphill battle.
[i]What does this have to do with NextBigFuture[/i]?
Signs-of-the-times, boy-o. 3 deaths in 1 week on BART’s premises is alarmingly high. Question is, what to do about it? BART is a public transportation system, and just like nearly-all similar systems around the world, it is very lightly policed and lightly “secured”. There are no metal-detectors at inlet gates. There aren’t canine sniffers and suspicious-persons real-time-video enhanced security pods. There aren’t even visible guards at most inlet stations.
Just like the metros of virtually every city on this Dear Planet I’ve had the pleasure to use. An open system, without assigned seating, meant to move hundreds of thousands of people every day around the city efficiently, quickly and aiming for relatively-trouble-free comporting.
So what to do?
Could hire a few hundred (for BART) extra employees, or a similar number of rent-a-badge-and-gun private security agencies to substantially increase the level of comprehensive security meted out each hour at the scores of BART stations. Would that work?
I don’t think so.
The openness of the system and people’s individual opportunities to [i]“move around”[/i] lend it all nature of unregulatable consequence.
In the end, I’m not coming up with a decent solution.
[b]Goat[/b]Guy
Is this story just for click bait? What does this have to do with the NextBigFuture?
And people say Israel is dangerous. San Francisco needs to have armed Police on every train and bus just like in Jerusalem, Israel to prevent such attacks. At lest the trains are not being blown up.