This wasn't my bus ride story, but it's an interesting bus story. Someone got mouthy on a bus and it set off an entire, ridiculous, chain of events.

So there was an incident in Louisville, Ky where this middle aged black man is riding a city bus late at night. He gets into it with the only other passengers on the bus--a group of young black teens. They argue verbally across the bus for some time before the kids decide to approach him. The surveillance tape from the bus shows him stab a 14 year old to death. He also stabbed a 13 year old girl who survived. So the police charge him with the murder, and the whole city is outraged over the whole thing. Well, they take it to the grand jury and they view the video and decide that it was self defense. I completely agree with their decision. I think the video clearly shows him trying to back away, exit the bus (the driver wouldn't open the door for some reason) and the kids attacking him. But the media really played it up painting him as the aggressor and the failure to indict as some failure of the justice system. It was perceived as a big injustice, particularly to the youth in the city.

So there was a big, mostly black, mostly teen rally in the city basically in protest of the failure to indict and in support of the child who was killed. Over 200 people showed up and it ended basically in a riot. It wasn't immediately clear what was happening, everyone just saw black teens everywhere in a frenzy. Everyone was panicking. There were a few instances of violence, looting, etc. video

One of the victims--a woman who was mugged--went to police and filed a report that four black men assaulted her. The police drove around with her that night and it sounds like they basically pointed to the first four black men they saw and asked her "Is that them?" There was no line up, the police didn't care if they actually fit the description or not. They were black and they were convenient. She said yup, I think so, and that was it. They were arrested and charged. The problem was their cell phone records put them in another part of the city and there was video of them in a gas station on another part of the city. Just think about how screwed they would be if that technology didn't exist.

Anyway, it took months for them to be released, even despite the exculpatory evidence. The DA refused to even consider that they might be innocent. He finally took them to the grand jury, who again, refused to indict. Eventually, they got an apology from the mayor and got a 1.5 million dollar settlement for the wrongdoing of police.

Didn't really make a blip on the national news, but the video of the bus stabbing and then the subsequent riot were pretty sensational in Louisville. And then of course the monumental screw up of the metro police who wanted to close the case without doing any real investigation. And all because of a stupid argument on a city bus.