SF Escalators Jammed With ... Poop

San Francisco workers were greeted with an unpleasant sight when they opened a broken subway escalator: a vast quantity of human waste—enough to require a hazardous materials team on the scene. It seems that homeless people frequently use BART stairwells as nighttime toilets; indeed, the poop came as no surprise to authorities, though the Chronicle reports the quantity was a bit jarring.

This week, nine BART escalators weren't working, five of them downtown; excrement could again be a culprit (the Chronicle calls poop "among the most acute" reasons the escalators bust). Police say there's no good way to prosecute people who relieve themselves on the spot. "Nobody wants to be walking in urine and feces, I know that, (but) if we don't see it or the person doesn't admit to it, they can just say it was someone else," says one. (More San Francisco stories.)