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I’m riding the MUNI last night and this kid decided he was going to tag his name on the side of the buss window with a magic marker. Not thinking (had my iPod headphones on) I gave him the evil eye (it was annoying that this kid would vandalize public property right there in front of everyone).

Five minutes later the kid gets off the buss and on his way out decided he would kick me in the face and run away.

Luckily I’m fine. My jaw is a little sore but in a day or so I won’t even feel anything. I haven’t been in any sort of fight since high school so it was a bit strange. I guess if I were more street savvy I would have noticed him acting funny and could have defended myself – I just never thought he would assault me.

My friend Steve got punched in the face while on MUNI last year and we had a brief conversation about MUNI security over IM today.

Turns out the driver has a button panic button which he can push at any time to alert the police. I notified the driver that I had in fact been assaulted and he told me to just get off the buss. Fun.

The MUNI emergency line goes right to an answering machine. Stabbed on MUNI?. Leave a message. We’ll get back to you in 72 hours!

Apparently, they keep video for up to three days but if they don’t call me back in time I won’t have any evidence.

Right now I’m thinking that a law abiding citizen can be assaulted on MUNI at any time and nothing will happen to them unless you physically restrain them and call 911.

Update:

After 15 minutes I finally got in touch with MUNI customer service. They took down my info and gave me the number for MUNI transit police so I can file a report (exciting!). The frightening thing is that due to budget constraints they’re going to try to recover the footage but they say that they recycle tapes. Nice.

All the problems of a police state and 24/7 surveillance without any of the advantages.