This morning I stood as usual at the platform level of the Foggy Bottom metro station waiting for my train. As I was waiting, a train going in the opposite direction stopped and riders began to get off drearily, a routine scene in my morning commute. Suddenly, from the other side of the upward-bound escalator, I heard a voice yelling, "Stop!" A man about in his later 20's came running around and escalator and started heading up the escalator, knocking people on the escalator every which way as he passed them. A policeman was on his heels the whole time. He tripped him once on the escalator by grabbing his ankle, and finally caught up to him and tackled him at the top, where the policeman worked to wrestle the man to the ground. It looked to be quite a struggle from where I was standing. Eventually, the policeman gained the upper hand and as he was still working the guy to the ground the guy the guy started bawling "Give me my shoes, man, I need my shoes!" I'm guessing his shoes must have come off. The cop clearly didn't care and expressed that with "F*ck your shoes! Get down!" Their “conversation” continued in that manner for the next moment. What glimpses I saw as they moved into view in the escalator staircase was the policeman forcing the guy's head down and shouting "Get down! Get on the ground!" Other metro riders were on the upper level and it looked like one rider even taunted the guy on the ground before he turned and walked away. I wonder if there had been some type of altercation between the two at the start of all this. My train arrived shortly thereafter and I tried to get what last glimpses I could. At this point it looked like the station manager was looking on, at least one new policeman had arrived, and the original policeman looked like he was punching the guy hard, possibly in the head. I also looked around in the station and saw that all eyes were on the event. As it was all taking place right at the top of the escalator, I wonder how riders disembarking from the train I got on managed to get up. If I wanted to really be nosy I could have let a few trains passed and stayed to watch the way this little drama played out.
I had never seen that type of police action in real life before. Most "live" police work that I had seen was the sort of directing traffic or writing traffic tickets. The most "exciting" thing I had ever previously seen was at Veteran's Park, where a car was being searched, some illegal drugs already having been found. OK, there was the time where a much younger me was yelled at for being too close to the railroad tracks, which was "exciting" for me in a more embarrassing sense, so we're just going to forget about that. I'm not going to count GW's UPD ganging up to beat up homeless people many times my freshman year. Playing on the Raider's for Norwalk's Pop Warner, all my coaches were by coincidence police officers, either local or state. The difficulty of practice each day depended on how tough the previous night had been for them (they all worked the night shifts so our late afternoons were their mornings). For example, one day we showed up and Assistant Coach Whiterben was looking mean and had a busted-up hand. "Some punk-@ass motherf*cker thought he could take my head off last night, but I put him on his f*cking back! Now start running!!!" And we ran.
Anyway, back to this morning. What stuck me was the robotic, glazed of stare I observed on everyone in the metro station during the struggle. I found it odd because to me, they all seemed emotionless. There wasn't any concern on anyone's face, just passive attention to what was happening on the top of the stairs. I'm going to say "pod-people-like". Why is this? Has the violence in our culture, especially on TV and movies, numbed us to sights like this? I could flip on a DVD and easily see something even more graphic.
Do motorists on the highway who slow down for accidents share the same dull stare with those in the station this morning today? Were those in the station merely calm externally, acting their age and keeping in decorum, whereas they in their younger years would have gone running to witness a schoolyard brawl? I suppose internally we are all wired a bloodthirsty species. We love those fights at school, the WWF, and action movies. For whatever reason the scuffle in the station this morning did not cause the spike in excitement it once might have in our lives, but it commanded everyone's attention and is likely going to be the most exciting thing in the workweek of us desk-jobbers. I’m not sure if I’m making the police takedown of that man a bigger deal than it was, or if I’m correct in saying that the incident was of greater significance than to be relinquished to mere water-cooler banter in the upcoming day of those who witnessed it.
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