Casey Miner
Police block fare gates at Embarcadero station.
Via IndyBay, a first look at a draft version of BART’s cell phone shut-down policy:
Draft BART policy on cell phone shutdown
BART
RECENT POSTS
Latest BART protest brings dialogue
Casey Miner
Police block fare gates at Embarcadero station.
By Casey Miner
Last night’s protests against BART police, now in their third week, caused far less disruption than the previous two demonstrations. In its place was what one might call dialogue – at least in isolated pockets.
As promised, a small groups of demonstrators took up posts outside Civic Center station just before 5pm, some wearing their signature Guy Fawkes masks, others kneeling on the ground writing signs with Sharpies.
By 5:30 the demonstration had become a march down Market Street towards the other downtown BART stations. Meanwhile, at Civic Center, several demonstrators lingered to debate with counterprotesters supporting BART police.
Roundup: State of the BART vs. Anonymous showdown
dantc
Monday protests at the Civic Center BART continue this week, as Anonymous–the hacker group known for taking on governmental and corporate power–has announced not only a protest this week during tonight’s commute, but next Monday as well. This week, a “counter-protest” of angry commuters is apparently in the works as well. That said, here’s a brief roundup of today’s #OpBART news.
Stay on message.
Trying to wrangle protesters under a manageable banner, Anonymous today asked participants to stay on message–specifically, that these protests began to draw attention to the shooting death of Charles Hill.
Protest Mondays? More BART demonstrations in store
Casey Miner
By Casey Miner
Monday night’s anti-BART protests closed two downtown stations during rush hour, for the second week in a row. Yesterday, the BART board took up the issue at a special meeting. “Instead of fixing the situation, we have escalated it to the point of, we don’t know how we’re ever going to get rid of the protestors, because they’re protesting for the right reason,” said BART director Lynette Sweet. “We’re not talking to folks the right way, and we’ve gotta fix that.” KALW’s transportation editor Casey Miner spoke with host Ben Trefny about the latest.
BART plans cell phone shutdown policy
Ali Winston
Demonstrators march down Market Street on August 22, 2011
By Casey Miner
NOTE: Casey Miner will be on KALW (91.7fm) at 5pm PST with more on BART and the First Amendment.
In the wake of multiple protests that have interrupted train service and forced station closures, BART’s board of directors met Wednesday to discuss when, if at all, the agency will disable cell phone service on its platforms. BART cut service earlier this month in an attempt to head off what it says was planned as a violent protest of July’s BART police shooting. Though officials have stood by their decision, the agency has not repeated the tactic since.
The service shutdown caught the attention of groups ranging from the FCC, which is still looking into the matter, to the ACLU, which has sent several letters to BART offering policy recommendations. ACLU attorney Michael Risher, who was present at the meeting, recommended that BART adopt a policy allowing cell shutdowns only in extreme circumstances, such as the imminent detonation of a bomb. Under the Constitution, he said, BART platforms are considered a designated public forum, and as a government agency BART must abide by that definition.
Second Anonymous protest closes 2 BART stations, 45 arrested
As promised, the hacktivist group Anonymous returned to Civic Center yesterday for a second rush-hour protest against officer-involved shootings by BART police and the transit agency’s decision to cut cellphone service in Downtown San Francisco stations on August 11th. Last Monday, approximately 200 demonstrators forced BART to close the Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell and Civic Center Stations for two hours, snarling the evening commute.
Though only Powell and Civic Center stations were shuttered during yesterday’s action, police took a distinctly sterner tone with the protests, arresting four people on the platform of the Civic Center station before declaring an unlawful assembly and forcing roughly 40 protesters and journalists up to the street. The San Francisco Bay Guardian posted video of BART police arresting a woman on the platform of the Civic Center Station. Three more people were arrested in the station for chanting slogans critical of BART and holding a banner.
BART Deputy Police Chief Dan Hartwig said the arrests were made over concerns for public safety and the ability of people to move freely through BART stations.
“That platform is not designed for anything besides waiting for public transportation,” Hartwig said.”We’ve gone out of our way to be accommodating, probably flexible to a fault. It’s our responsibility to maintain a safe environment within this system. We can’t afford to have this be a weekly occurrence.”
Anonymous # OpBART protest closes Downtown San Francisco BART stations
Ali Winston
BART tactical police confront protesters at the entrance of the Embarcadero Station on August 15, 2011
Four downtown BART transit stations were closed during rush hour yesterday by a protest decrying the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority’s decision to shut down cellphone service last Thursday to avert a potential protest over the July 3rd fatal shooting of Charles Hill by rookie BART Police Officer James Crowell. Dozens of BART and San Francisco Police officers were deployed in riot gear and on motorcycles to keep tabs on the protest, but save from a few baton shoves and a great deal of invective, yesterday’s protest was free of violence.
The protest was called by Anonymous, a loose-knit, transnational hacker collective responsible which has aligned itself with pro-democracy demonstrators in the Middle East and the controversial whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. Anonymous labeled Monday’s actions #OpBART, sparking a flurry of traffic on the social networking website Twitter.
FCC: We’re monitoring BART’s cell service shutdown
By Casey Miner
BART board president Bob Franklin this morning defended the agency’s decision to disable cell service on several platforms last Thursday, saying that any inconvenience passengers might have experienced paled in comparison to the potential danger and chaos of a large protest. “As a board member I cannot tolerate a protest on the platform,” he said. “In downtown San Francisco at the peak of the evening, there’s way too many people, trains coming in at 80mph, a thousand volts of electricity nearby, it’s just dangerous.”
On July 11, a month before last Thursday’s shutdown, demonstrators upset about the BART Police killing of a homeless man named Charles Hill filled downtown stations, crowding platforms and at one point attempted to climb on top of a stopped train. “No one was killed,” said Franklin of that demonstration. “And someone could have easily been killed.”