PDA

View Full Version : D.C. Metro chief downplays failure to alert public about rape




enhanced_deficit
05-31-2016, 12:55 AM
The Washington Times - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld on Tuesday downplayed his agency’s decision not to issue a public alert last month about a rape on a moving train, as he tried to assure lawmakers of the beleaguered transit agency’s safety during a House Transportation subcommittee hearing.

Mr. Wiedefeld told the lawmakers that the overall transit system is safe. He said a violent crime is just as likely to happen outside of Metro as it is inside the system.
“But that means nothing to the person who’s the victim, and it doesn’t mean much for perception,” he conceded to the House transit subcommittee members.
Metro increasingly has come under scrutiny for a series of electrical arcing, smoke and fire incidents that have caused major delays and placed passengers in precarious situations on the subway lines: An arcing insulator on the Red Line created 45-minute delays for morning commuters just hours before Mr. Wiedefeld testified Tuesday. Federal regulators have threatened the transit agency with defunding and closures for its safety lapses.
However, a different set of safety concerns has arisen amid a spate of violence on the subway system.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/24/paul-wiedefeld-dc-metro-chief-downplays-failure-to/

AZJoe
05-31-2016, 06:08 AM
The D.C. Metro is a poster child for incompetence, corruption and cronyism. https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/12/09/why-does-metro-suck-dangerous-accidents-escalator-outages/

It is mired in incompetence, complacency, and discrimination: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/26/metro-derailed-by-culture-of-complacence-incompete/?page=all
a proxy to a clubby culture of favoritism in which merit has little to do with promotions, and accountability, such as noting safety violations, is a career death knell. ... The inept get promoted, and the capable get buried. Smart people were put in the corner, ostracized and given nothing to do ... Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers ... 1.4 percent of its bus and train operators who are Hispanic ... 1.5 percent are white ... 25 percent who are female of any race are “less than reasonably expected.” ... In the national capital region, Hispanics make up 13 percent of adults and blacks comprise 25 percent; white women constitute 29 percent. “The odds of such a disparity occurring by chance are statistically infinitesimal," ... White and Hispanic employees who allege discrimination have found a deaf ear at Metro’s civil rights office, whose 17 employees are black. ... There’s a strong sense of nepotism, and it is the culture of Metro,” the civil rights employee said. “It was more of a buddy system than it was merit-based. ... Also rising rapidly to senior supervisor was Robbie O. McGee, who spent eight years in federal prison for felony distribution of PCP while on probation for another crime. He received five pay increases at Metro in two years. ... Diligence is discouraged, because anywhere one looked was something that needed to be fixed — and change, especially when it involved work, was anathema to senior Metro line workers. ... trains were operating without radios in defiance of federal rules. Other drivers confirmed that was common knowledge. So she authored a study and included a recommendation that Metro start substituting cellphones. “I was read the riot act: ‘You had no right to compile these statistics,’ even though it was my job. They didn’t want people showing problems,” she said. ... “It is common for midnight-shift workers to “lock the doors and go to sleep, because they’ve got other jobs,” and equally common for supervisors to turn a blind eye ... Anyone who blew the whistle or caused any trouble... — you’d be moved. ... Dozens said white workers, especially women, were openly subject to racist and sexist remarks without repercussion — behavior that drove many targets to seek transfers or leave the agency. All said they have been inexplicably passed over hundreds of times for promotions to positions such as station manager while others with less seniority passed them by. “I was the only white woman in car maintenance out of 338, and they made my life miserable,” Ms. Whorton said, adding that colleagues once electrified a track circuit on which she was working and laughed. “Nothing happened to them.” ...

Ronin Truth
05-31-2016, 06:09 AM
Isn't rape just the usual ho-hum name of the game in D.C.?

alucard13mm
05-31-2016, 08:37 AM
Maybe there isnt a lot of female bus or train drivers because they dont want to do it? How many female brick layers? How many female waste disposal drivers? How many female plumbers? Female warehouse workers?

tod evans
05-31-2016, 08:39 AM
Maybe there isnt a lot of female bus or train drivers because they dont want to do it? How many female brick layers? How many female waste disposal drivers? How many female plumbers? Female warehouse workers?

Kill the welfare/family court state and watch these jobs be filled with willing female workers.....

Spikender
05-31-2016, 09:30 AM
Maybe there isnt a lot of female bus or train drivers because they dont want to do it? How many female brick layers? How many female waste disposal drivers? How many female plumbers? Female warehouse workers?

I agree it was strange that they focused so hard on the female aspect when the real story here is that every race except blacks are being excluded from gaining employment. Normally I wouldn't care if this was a private enterprise that hired who they wanted, but this is more Government funded garbage that needs to be torn away. Because unlike a private enterprise that would collapse with so much corruption and mechanical problems, a Government institution will be propped up forever.