Man charged as racist testicle-grabbing, book-throwing puncher at Braintree Red Line station

Clearly, if we would have just left them sleeping on the benches, (which, btw, were never placed there to allow the elderly, physically disabled, infirm, or just plain tired rest while they wait for a train or bus, then this poor fellow would have never gotten into trouble.

Let's outlaw all other people from using the benches - homeless only! And stop calling them benches - they are beds!

There is no question that the metropolitan area has a serious issue with homelessness. We can agree on that. However blaming this act on taking the bench handles off the benches at stations has no relation.

This was an aggressive person, possibly mentally unstable, for what ever reason. It is highly likely that this aggressive response would have happened anyplace. What would be the response here if they had this interaction with a passenger in a station?

Clearly the metro areas... all of the cities... need to come up with a plan for homeless people but the transit system is not their fallback housing. Even New York is taking actions against this and the situation is far worse there than in Boston. This encounter was at the end of the rail line and they needed him off so the train could be sent to the stub-end tracks for out-of-service storage likely. Otherwise he might have been left there to ride back in the opposite direction. That's usually the only reason they clear in-service cars of people at terminus stations.

Would your response have been the same had this person attacked a woman or child on the train or at a station?

Stop connecting all of the MBTAs faults to broader societal problems. If this was a moderated message board the mod might have removed your post as off topic.

The guy didn't attack someone because the world is not flat. He also did not attack someone because there was no bench to sleep on at South Station. He was challenged by an authority figure and efforts to get him to comply with a simple instruction to leave the train was met with violence.

So we should let them sleep in the station so they don't sleep on the train and get lost, as if they were simply confused tourists? That does not seem like a solution to me. Or even a good suggestion. If you have been in Bowdoin, North Station or DTX station anytime lately, which you haven't, you would know what I mean. We have to end this notion once and for all that the unhoused and drug addicted somehow have a right to occupy T stations. Or even if they don't have a right per se, that we should be "humane" and let them set up housekeeping there just because we're nice. Not only do they sleep there, they smoke, urinate, defecate, shoot up and sometimes aggressively approach people. And they don't wear masks. Ever. As someone who uses one or more of these stations daily, I feel I am in a hazardous, toxic, unsafe environment, and I have never felt that way in the previous 45 years I have used any T station in the city.

No person should be seeking shelter in a mass transit depot.
As the incident shows, if indeed this man was homeless, it's just not safe. The T Staff is horrified, the officer struck, the man arrested, which is traumatic for him as well. People don't take jobs in Transportation to provide social services for vulnerable. They drive trains and buses,T cops are to keep order, not provide therapy, the T station is not a shelter or a hostel, it is a depot for heavy machinery. Demanding that vulnerable individuals be given support to live in the street is not supporting their overall well being. Its insane to demand that the t provide benches. You want to sleep on a bench in a train garage? Refocus your lens, supporting risky situations for individuals experiencing homelessness, and or mental illness is not a humane.