BART General Manager, Grace Crunican has said she will not tolerate BART shut downs and will seek monetary restitution against peaceful civil right activists who closed the West Oakland Station on November 28th, 2014 (see link below). The BART Board and the Alameda County District Attorney O’Malley clearly have learned nothing from the events in Ferguson. Will BART and the Alameda County DA self-reform or will they require years of costly litigation and receivership before they learn that “Black Lives Matter”?
BART’s website boasts, “Six years after the tragic shooting death of Oscar Grant III focused attention on the BART Police Department (BPD), BART and BPD continue their efforts to reshape and reform themselves to meet the needs of the community BART serves.”
BART may feel they are forgiven and excused, but this punitive and malicious treatment of these peaceful black activists brings any reconciliation they think they have achieved into question. It begs the question; is there a continued pattern and practice of discrimination against black people by BART?
Are people who disrupt BART due to mental health problems, overly enthusiastic alcohol influenced sports fans or concert goers, forced to pay restitution for fares lost? Are the families of suicide victims and passengers who simply fell onto the tracks liable for damages? Who besides black political activists has been asked to pay restitution for fares lost?
The legal cost of answering these questions and defending against the landslide of civil rights litigation that will follow this mean-spirited and punitive prosecution, will be tens to hundreds of times greater than the $70,000 that BART says it must recover. This persecution of peaceful black activists also invites more protests and disruption of BART. Black Lives Matter is a civil rights movement to reform a bias and dangerous police and justice system; BART should not be siding with a bias justice system against a community it says it serves.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/...
Petition of over 4,000 signatures to BART Board
http://iam.colorofchange.org/...