As originally published in the Las Vegas Penny Press 12/20/07 - the cover story!

CAT: If You're Caucasian, You're Screwed

Commentary, by Wyatt Cox, Contributing Editor

The bus attacks last week in Baltimore where racial violence took place while other passengers and even the drivers did nothing sure do give you pause to reflect. But, after all, racial tensions back east are certainly higher than here, right? Our Citizen Area Transit busses are certainly clean, comfortable, and safe, right?

Don't bet on it.

The following two stories took place in November here in Las Vegas along the Nellis route. Certainly not in a troubled section of town, and certainly a route which one would feel was safe and the drivers and passengers would be courteous.

Four weeks ago, on November 18^th, my wife was on her way to work at Sam's Town on one of those newly redesigned bus routes that we discussed a few weeks ago. It used to be that on the fairly busy Nellis route CAT ran the new double decker buses Now, because of the multi-route nature of their new scheduling, the double deckers are gone, and the buses are always packed.

On this day my very pregnant wife found the last available seats in the handicapped section along with another woman with a newborn and a toddler.

When the bus got to Sahara, there was a wheelchair waiting to board the bus. There were two areas that the wheelchair could go. One area was where my wife and the lady with the small children were sitting. The other was where a group of loudly talking, non-impaired African-American women were sitting.

Guess which group the driver told to move for the wheelchair.

If you guessed the Caucasians on the bus, you get a red star!

My wife argued with the driver but he was having none of it.

So she picked up her cell phone and called CAT and got a supervisor on the phone. He asked to speak to the driver. The driver then proceeded to have a brief conversation with the supervisor on my wife's cell phone and a longer one on the CAT radio system.

Because my wife called the CAT supervisor, the driver felt she was "causing trouble" and wanted to put her off the bus. The supervisor was arguing with the driver but he was insistent.

Finally my wife did something that she had never done before. She dropped the husband card.

"I think you should know", she told the driver, "that my husband is a member of the media."

The discussions ceased immediately. At least between the driver and the supervisor.

The African American women were very upset that my wife would make that call. My wife explained that she wasn't mad at them, but as my wife so eloquently put it, the "lazy-ass poorly raised men on this bus who wouldn't stand up to give their own mother a seat."

And she was - and still is - right.

It's not CAT's responsibility to teach assholes who aren't gentlemanly enough to stand up and give a woman, a child, or a disabled individual a seat. It is their job to ensure that those individuals are safely seated, because if they are standing and something happens, the lawsuit could be significant.

Oh, my wife was asked by the African Americans if they were pregnant, would she give up her seat?

Yes, my wife said. In her day -- and mine -- we were raised right.

A few days later, on November 28^th, on the same route my wife experienced something even more distasteful. An African-American man was on the bus, intoxicated and carrying an open container of liquor. This "gentleman" was making lewd remarks to another passenger who was rejecting his advances. The man was practically sexually assaulting her. The situation got so loud that the driver stopped the bus and told the Caucasian woman that she had to get off the bus because she was causing a disturbance. When it was pointed out that the man had an open container of alcohol on the bus in violation of the law, the driver reluctantly asked him to get off. He did, but only after punching the woman in the face. A number of African-American passengers – and the driver himself – commented that the woman “got what she deserved” and should have kept her mouth shut.

WTF?

You mean that in society today, a woman who rejects someone's sexual advances is fair game? I'm sure that NOW will have something to say about this. Perhaps this is the plan: legalizing drugs, rape, murder, and arson. That would certainly eliminate crime....

To those who think I bring these stories up to grind a personal axe, may I point out that for every Mrs. Wyatt Cox that encounters incidents like this, there must be thousands more incidents that don't get reported and do not have a soapbox like I do to illuminate the problem.

I related both these stories to the RTC's Allison Huntly who said she would have to talk to the contractor who runs the CAT Fixed Transit Route service, Veolia and get back to me.

As of this writing, no one has replied.

I can tell you that on routes that are more troubling, the Sahara and Charleston routes, I'm hesitant to drag out my laptop or palmtop to do any writing. At least twice people have tried to steal them out of my hands, once in the middle of the day!

I've seen knock-down drag-out fights and drivers do nothing. I've seen people threaten drivers and bully them into letting them on without paying. I've seen open alcohol use on buses and drivers say nothing.

All because of the color of their skin.

For the record, in the stories from my wife, the first driver was white, the second was black.

With CAT, and with society in general, there seems to be two different sets of rules. The color of your skin - and the driver's skin - dictates which rules apply. If you're Caucasian, you're screwed.

The response of those who read the draft of this article have fallen into two categories.

Those who haven't ridden CAT are shocked that these kind of events take place on our city buses.

Those who have ridden CAT are surprised that I haven't written about worse events, some of which they have related to me and may be subjects of a follow-up, and some too gruesome to relate even privately. Seems I may be considered a late comer to finding out about these events, yet our local media seems to ignore CAT on a regular basis.

Finally, CAT participates in the "Safe Place" program. Given the incidents which we have encountered over the last few weeks, I don't think any person should ever consider a CAT bus as a Safe Place....