THE METRO COP

He rubs his temples as he speaks, as if attempting to relieve some great pressure behind the eyes. He hasn't lived in Los Angeles since the crash—and doesn't miss it. "Once I saw how fuckin' fast it was all gonna go down," he says, "I didn't stick around for long."

THE METRO BEAT was basically a side-hustle for me. The city didn't want to have to train new people for the job. So they just let us street cops do a few extra hours each week riding the trains back and forth. Paid us one-and-a-half our regular rate.

It was a pretty easy gig. You had to deal with the homeless and some drugged-out folks. But those people are harmless. They were all on tranquilizers, you know? Heroin. Fentanyl. Strong stuff.

We had to deal with some overdoses, of course. But mostly people were just doped up. They didn't put up a fight.

The older cops would always talk about how different it was from the '80s and '90s, when the street people were on uppers instead of downers. Crack, meth, stuff that makes you wiry. Those people would try to fight you. Tear your eyeballs right out of your head.

I'm glad I missed that.

Anyway. It was May 29th, the morning after the one guy went on TV and showed off the replicators for the first time. I had seen clips of it online, but I didn't really know what to make of it. So that morning I just got up to work like it was a normal day. And at first it was normal.

My shift consisted of me getting on the station and just riding back and forth until a little after noon. I got on at Pico and headed west, toward Santa Monica. Met my partner at Vermont station, and we sort of hung around at La Cienega/Jefferson for a while.

Nothing too much was going on that day. We told a kid with a speaker to turn down his music. And my partner helped a blind woman get on a train headed toward downtown.

Otherwise it was quiet. A little bit lighter traffic than usual, actually.

That all changed when we got back on the line and headed for Culver City station.

Right away, I knew something was wrong. There was a huge crowd gathered on the platform. Absolutely massive. And they were disorderly.

I was looking out through the train's window as we pulled up, and I could make out people's faces. They looked agitated. Frantically pointing and pushing each other around. I figured there might be a fight or something.

When my partner and I got off the train, we both started yelling, "Police here!" That tends to cool crowds off and break things up without us having to actually do anything, ya know.

But people barely acknowledged us.

That's when I realized that a lot of the action seemed to be gathered around one main point.

On all of the expo line's platforms, there's these big columns with electrical outlets built into them. You can kinda squat down next to them and charge your phone using 'em.

The crowd had gathered around one of those poles, and so my partner and I sort of pushed through the crowd to see what was going on there.

And right there on the ground were two women. Hispanic. Both older. Sweet-looking little abuelas, you know?

And they had a rep plugged into the pole.

It was my first time seeing one live. I'll never forget it. One of the women was using the rep to print out new replicator parts. The other one was taking the parts out and assembling the pieces together.

This was wild to me. They were printing out replicators using a replicator, and then handing the completed reps out to whoever was closest at hand.

Basically they'd converted the train platform into a little two-woman replicator distribution factory.

My partner tried to take control of the situation. Said, "Hey, you can't do that he–" before I grabbed her shoulder and stopped her.

I knew from one look at the faces in the crowd that there was no way we were going to stop this.

These people looked like children gathered before God, ready to receive their blessings. If we tried to bust up the little operation these women had going, it would lead to violence.

Pretty quickly, my partner came to her senses. Then she started actually thinking ahead. If we couldn't stop this from happening, we could at least help make the process orderly.

So she walked over to the abuelas assembling the reps, leaned down, and said something I couldn't hear to one of the abuelas.

The woman paused for a second, then looked my partner in the eye and nodded.

My partner stood up on a nearby bench and addressed the crowd, shouting to be heard. She told everybody that the police were here to protect these women and make sure they were able to distribute replicators in peace. She pointed out that there were at least three or four other poles wired with electrical plug-ins on the platform, and that distribution of the machines would go a lot more quickly if we used all those outlets to make machines at once.

She called for volunteers to help do the same job the women on the ground were doing.

Sure enough, a number of hands went up, and people came forward. Black people, brown people, white people. Asians. All the many colors of Los Angeles.

It was pretty clear we had more volunteers than we needed.

My partner, God bless her. She just got straight to it. She watched the first two women closely to figure out how they printed and assembled parts, then she hauled one of the newly-completed machines over to an open outlet, plugged it in, and began training two of our new volunteers to start their own printing process.

This whole time, I was just standing there watching, sort of dumbstruck by the scene.

My partner had gotten three different groups of volunteers set up around poles, printing away, when finally she looked up and noticed me standing there being useless.

She told me to escort more volunteers to the next station, to begin printing more machines there.

I didn't say a word, I just nodded, went over to one of the poles, and retrieved one of the newly-assembled reps.

My partner pointed a group of six of the volunteers my way, and together the seven of us hauled a rep onto the next westward-bound train that came by. My partner stayed behind to protect the Culver City station volunteers.

Once I was on the train, I was sort of lost in my head, shook by the craziness of it all. Didn't hear a word anyone around me was saying. I just sat next to the rep, guarding it like it was a newborn baby.

At the next platform, Palms station, two of the volunteers took the rep, plugged it into a pole, and got to work printing out new parts right away. This time, we had four separate reps up and running within just over 10 minutes.

Pretty much everyone who walked up the steps to the platform immediately forgot their plans for the day and either volunteered to help with distribution or got into line so they could get their own rep. People were using ride-hailing apps to summon self-driving cars, then groups of volunteers helped load up their new machines.

Pretty soon, you could see that word about the reps was spreading through the local neighborhoods. Cars started pulling up, people hopping out demanding to know where they could get a rep of their own. The presence of so many people selflessly helping to hand out the reps helped keep it a relatively calm atmosphere.

Once things had been running smoothly for another half hour or so, I was feeling pretty confident that Palms station would be okay running without me, so I grabbed another set of five or six volunteers and we hopped onto the next train to go to Westwood Rancho Park station.

It continued on like that, volunteers converting every metro station in West Los Angeles into pop-up distribution centers. Expo/Sepulveda, Expo/Bundy, 26th Street/Bergamot, 17th Street.

As I got on the train to head to the final stop, I started doing the math in my head. Including Culver City station, we had seven stations running four replicators each. Given that they could print out all the parts for a new replicator in about five minutes total… like 28 replicators every five minutes… so 12 complete reps in an hour for each of those. That was something over 300 reps per hour.

And each of the people taking the replicators home could start cranking out their own machines to give to neighbors.

I was getting really excited, you know? Like, I realized how big this thing really was. But my attitude changed when we got to the final stop, Santa Monica station.

At all the other stations, there were maybe a few people waiting patiently for us to arrive. I didn't expect Santa Monica to be any different. So I only had a half-dozen volunteers with me. Couple of older black gentlemen, an Indian woman and her husband. And two college students—nerdy Asian kids.

The only one of us with any muscle on 'em was me. So we were really not prepared for the scene we rolled into.

It was a full-blown riot. People fighting each other, shoving each other out of the way for a closer look at us as we pulled up.

Right as the doors open, these guys started pouring into the car. It was a couple of beach bum looking dudes, but they had two guys in suits with them.

One of the suits pointed at me. I had the rep sitting on the handicap-accessible seat next to me.

I couldn't do anything. The guys just bowled us over, snatched up the rep, and started running. The two beach bums were carrying it, with the suits tagging along.

They got out of the train, and immediately got mobbed by the crowd. I saw one of the suits go down, and people just started kicking the shit out of him. One of the beach bums got shoved onto the tracks—looked like he cracked his head on the rail when he landed.

A few of the volunteers I'd brought with me ran into the fray, trying to calm things down, but I could tell it was hopeless. People were in a full-blown frenzy, hitting each other and reaching to grab the replicator for themselves.

I decided to try to bring some order to the situation. I stepped off the train, drew my gun, pointed it at the sky, and fired off a single shot, yelling, "Police! Stop fighting!"

That didn't work at all.

People started screaming, "He's got a gun!" and scrambling to get away.

Somehow in the middle of the chaos, someone managed to get the rep off the platform. I caught a glimpse of the guys across the street.

They were trying to get the rep set up on one of those electric rental scooters. One of them was fumbling with his phone, trying to get the thing to start up, when he got slammed into the wall by some musclehead. A bunch of thugs gathered around it and grabbed the rep for themselves.

That's when I heard the door to the train starting to beep.

The train I'd rode in on was heading back east. I figured I might as well go back to Culver City station and check on my partner, so I hopped onboard, totally alone on the train.

My first stop on the way back was 17th Street station, and when I got there I felt this huge sense of relief at how orderly it was. People were lined up waiting to receive their reps, and all four poles were in action, with volunteers on each to print and assemble parts.

I saw groups of people helping carry new reps to cars. So I started thinking that, you know, there must be something different about the beach that makes people crazy or something. The train doors closed and I went on my way. Bergamot station was more or less like 17th Street. Running just fine, although I noticed that the line to receive reps was getting pretty long.

At Bundy and Sepulveda stations, the lines were running all the way down the stairs and around the base of the structure nearly into the street, and people were looking fidgety.

It was at Westwood Rancho Park station that I noticed how things were starting to break down. An argument had broken out between two of the guys in line over who had been next to receive their rep. It looked like people were handling it pretty well, but then I saw a group of guys mobbing a lady who was just about to put her rep in her car. They shoved her to the ground and tossed the rep into their own waiting vehicle, then sped off.

Everybody in line saw it, and people started getting agitated and getting out of line.

The doors to the train closed on me right then, and I had this sinking feeling in my stomach as we approached the next station.

Sure enough, Palms station was in much worse shape. There was no more semblance of order. Groups of guys with makeshift weapons—pipes and shit—were surrounding the poles. They looked like they were trying to keep order, but everyone obviously looked on-edge.

Each of the poles still had a few volunteers printing and assembling reps, but it wasn't clear at all who would be receiving the new ones as they came out.

A self-appointed leader was pointing out lucky receivers of new reps as they finished assembly, but the crowd seemed not to accept the decisions, and fights were breaking out all over the place before anyone could make it off the platform with their reps.

Just as my train started moving east again, away from Palms station, I saw one of the guys protecting the replicators pull a gun and fire a few shots into the crowd. Almost instantly he was mobbed. The train on the other track—the westbound line—was speeding past the platform just as we pulled out, and the last thing I saw was the mob hurling him into its path.

The ride between Palms and Culver City only takes a few minutes at most, but it seemed to take much longer. I was so terrified of what I'd see there.

When I got close, I pressed my face to the glass and tried to get a look at the platform. I couldn't see anyone. No crowds, no replicators, nothing. But as we got drew nearer, I started to see that there were people—just none standing up.

Bodies, scattered all over the station, lying in pools of blood.

The train bumped over something as it pulled in. I knew it was probably a body, but I wasn't about to look and see for myself.

Besides, there was no reason to get off the train.

There was no sign of my partner.

No sign of any reps either.

The Metro Cop falls silent.

What was going through your mind?

That I needed to get my family the fuck out of the city.