I'm not taking the incident lightly, however there is a reasonable question to if the LOROL station assistants are revenue protection officers?

Checking tickets and Oyster balances should be part of their job description, yet I suspect most of them don't have the power to stop someone or issue a penalty fare.

If you remember when Southern brought in the chaps with the Hi-Viz jackets to check tickets in 2009 after the barriers at FH were installed, they looked more like enforcement officers than the current staff.

The station assistant in question may have also been on his break for all we know.