According to SEPTA, which runs the Philadelphia subway, children under four ride free with a fare paying adult. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t questions, challenges, heinous criminals trying to sneak in the occasional four year, one month child and rob SEPTA blind.  From Shaun King at the Daily Kos:

Originally posted on Facebook earlier Friday morning by Irize Refined Earth, this video shows a young father, carrying his infant daughter, being arrested by Philadelphia police. Witnesses state that it was all because he didn’t pay a far for his daughter, but policy there states kids under 4 are free.

See how people just can’t see the problem with those munchkins bent on destroying society by feigning four or under status?  You pay for their larcenous ways. Well, maybe not you, but someone does.  And so the brave protectors of subway fares leapt into action.

Not that it was enough for the small, but growing, group of law enforcers to surround the adult accomplice, but as he was cuffed (see the cautious and delicate preparation involved in covert cuffing?) and removed from the train, taken to the platform where he could be checked for terrorist tendencies, the small child was held in his arms.

If there was ever any doubt about the potential danger raised by this duo of duplicity, the phalanx of police that appears out of nowhere is a testament to their potential to do harm.  Who knows how many more infants might sweep onto a SEPTA subway without paying their fare, destroying the fabric of society as we know it?

Are you outraged yet?  Now for the kicker.  The Shaun King outrage machine that announced this video and implored his 144 thousand twitter followers to make this travesty go viral, may have been based upon naked assumption, reliance on a story that was false and confirmation bias.

Irize Refined Earth Ok, so I received an inbox with further info that may change things. ALLEGEDLY, dude beat up his girl and took the baby from her.  I’m sick all over again. I will that whatever really happened comes out, and I still feel horrible that the baby had to witness any of this. I still feel there are much better ways to make arrests when children are involved, and alleged perpetrators are being calm.

So is this now true, and the story about the arrest based upon not paying for a child’s fare untrue? Beats me.  The problem is that stuff flies around the internets too fast to be sure, and so we rely on trusted sources to provide us with the story, the context, when it isn’t plain in the video.

Sometimes, the story pans out. Sometimes, it doesn’t.  What’s problematic here is that those believing in the initial story, supporting King’s plea to make the video go viral, did so in reliance on King. They trusted him. They expected him to have vetted the story before putting it into the hands of his massive following.

Granted, his Daily Kos post explained his source, a Facebook post which is nearly as credible as a reddit post.  But we trust, we get caught up in the assumption that it must be real because someone, somebody, most have made sure before the outrage machine was cranked up to eleven. Only to realize later that maybe we’ve succumbed to confirmation bias, our inclination to what to believe that which we want to believe.

It’s not like there is a dearth of bad shit happening in the world, things to get angry about, that’s real.  But the impulse to believe first and figure it out later is strong, and dangerous.

And because the title of this post may not readily hit home, it’s not just about the child in the arms of the man in the video, but about us, me, believing that this was as egregious and ridiculous an exercise of authority as first appeared, before the facts were known from a credible source.  I retwitted it unskeptically. This was the act of an infant, and I contributed to the problem.