My blood boils when I think about the stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska partly because, in watching the video, I could almost see what was coming next. Being new to America, Iryna was not aware of some basic safety precautions that most natives take for granted when traveling in Democrat cities.

First, there is no way that I would sit down with my back to a Rastaman-looking character like Decarlos Brown Jr. In fact, I probably would have moved to another train car. However, Iryna sensed no peril. Apparently, none of her American friends had sat her down and gave her a heads up on life in America. Worse yet, they may have fed her the crap that she had nothing to fear traveling alone in the city. It all made sense to her based on her experience in her homeland. In Kyiv, normal people are sleeping in the subways during air raids. Here in the USA, the only people roaming and sleeping in the subways are vagrants with a history of violence and mental illness.

It does not have to be that way. I learned that one day during a trip to Madrid in 1991. I was traveling on a brand-new subway line, when a homeless bag lady got on the train muttering to herself. Coming from New York City, it was something that I was all too well acquainted with. I judged her to be crazy but harmless. Then at the next station stop, something happened that just amazed me. Three Spanish Civil Guards, their equivalent of police, came on to the train and carried her out as she squirmed in their grasp. This was in a time before cell phones and security cameras. This was solely the work of vigilant police taking the initiative to make the subway ride a pleasant one. I looked around afterwards at the expressions on the faces of my fellow travelers and asked my Spanish friend about it and no one, I repeat no one, seemed surprised. Their response was “Of course you can’t let lunatics wander the subway.” It was such a refreshing attitude, that all I could say was WOW, if only New York City were like this.

My point is that there is nothing cosmic about how to make mass transit safer. Security cameras and 911 apps are not the answer. Charlotte mass transit provided plenty of that. What they did not have is a policeman walking the beat and making sure the riff-raff did not hang around for long.

Image: Barcex, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.