Can’t Get Respect

Photo Credit: Amtrak Arrest

Lakeysha Beard, 39 years old from Oakland, California, was escorted off an Amtrak train by police. Ms. Beard was reported to have been talking on her cell phone the entire trip from Oakland to Salem, Oregon, approximately 16 hours. The problem was not so much that Ms. Beard was talking non-stop on the train, but was actually in a “quiet car” on the train. Conductors and fellow passengers repeatedly asked Ms. Beard to be quiet to no avail. Instead, Ms. Beard became belligerent, creating a scene.

Amtrak conductors called in the police to solve the problem. While stopped in Salem, the police escorted Ms. Beard from the train, and arrested her for disorderly conduct stemming from the altercations with the Amtrak staff and fellow passengers. When the police met the stopped train in Salem, Ms. Beard had reportedly calmed down, but was still arrested. Here is the video that was posted.




The story begs the question, “Can you actually talk continuously for 16 hours on a cell phone?” My guess is that Ms. Beard was able to charge her cell phone along the way, or had a spare battery. I know of no cell phone battery that will allow you 16 hours of talk time between charges. I travel with a spare battery as well as a spare charger for my Droid X. Of course I also have a Droid X extended battery so I have longer talk times. Ms. Beard might wish her battery had run out instead. I wonder how much the disorderly conduct charge cost her in court costs. And imagine the embarrassment of having the video posted on YouTube.

The most ironic part of this story is that Ms. Beard, as reported by MSNBC, felt disrespected. What about the other passengers that Ms. Beard disrupted? In my opinion, Ms. Beard was just being rude. After all, isn’t the whole point of a “quiet car” on the train supposed to be a quiet place to relax, read, or sleep? My first thought when I read this story on CNET News was that Ms. Beard obviously had no class or manners. What’s your take on it? Should Ms. Beard have been thrown from the train? What about the arrest? Should she have been just escorted from the train or was the arrest justified?

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