BART Police Oversight Plan Dead

While BART has been trying to keep public attention focused on their seriously flawed police oversight model, Oscar Grant's family and community activists continue to confront the simple fact that after eight months BART has still not held one single person accountable for the murder of Oscar Grant or the abuse of his friends on January 1st. BART allowed Johannes Mehserle to resign in January and now have allowed Police Chief Gary Gee to retire of his own accord before the end of the year.

On Friday, September 4th, the Bay Bridge was closed for the long holiday weekend due to construction, meaning there would likely be a larger than normal ridership, and Johannes Mehserle's 995 hearing was set for 9am, so activists from No Justice No BART, Oakland CopWatch, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights took to the BART system at 7am to distribute thousands of fliers and talk with hundreds of passengers on their morning commute. Alternating between walking through BART stations and dozens of cars on various BART lines through the East Bay, activists were well received by supportive BART passengers, many of whom remain uninformed about known details from January 1st and BART's willful denying of community demands for accountability, as well as BART's lack of action after the scathing Meyers Nave report was released.

As the morning commute wound down, activists left BART to attend Mehserle's 995 hearing.

Later in the day, after the Mehserle hearing, it was learned that BART's disingenuous attempt to ram through AB1586 (originally named AB16) would fail in this legislative session, meaning that there would be no new police oversight of any kind established before the end of the year. This is just as well, because in April BART had already stalled Tom Ammiano's AB312, which would have mandated civilian oversight for the BART Police Department (and potentially could have been law by now if BART had gotten behind it). BART stymied AB312 (along with California police unions) under the promise that they would create their own civilian police oversight model, but BART undercut the strength of their proposal every step of the way. BART chose two BART police union representatives to be on the subcommittee tasked with creating the oversight model and BART put provisions into their draft that weakened their model, such as a 2/3 supermajority requirement and allowing a police appointment to the "civilian" board. These moves were made to appease police interests, yet BART's own police unions and PORAC still opposed BART's oversight model. Once again bending to the will of police interests, BART stripped out any strength their oversight plan had left, the authority for it's Board of Directors to overrule the General Manager and Police Chief in matters of discipline for police misconduct. BART did this without notifying the public of the drastic change, all the while BART was asking the community to lobby legislators for their plan. This community bait-and-switch was perpetrated so that BART could have the "help" of PORAC (Peace Officers Research Association of California) to get their changes to the BART Act approved by the California legislature, but apparently PORAC's help wasn't so helpful after all and the BART oversight plan is now dead on the tracks.

BART had wanted to be able to say they had "done something" to make amends for the murder of Oscar Grant III before the one-year anniversary of his death this coming January, and hence the rush to push for any old grossly inadequate police oversight plan. Now with that plan dead, BART's lack of moral courage shown by its unwillingness to hold anyone accountable will only be that much more obvious if they continue to refuse to take disciplinary action before January 1st, 2010.




Community Demands Action at BART Board Meeting; BART Lies Yet Again
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/31/18620299.php

BART Uses Faux "Community" at Press Conference to Attack Ammiano for BART's Own Failures
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/27/18619874.php

Town Hall on BART's Lobby of State Legislature for Their Police Oversight Plan
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/25/18619422.php

BART Going Forward with Seriously Flawed Police Oversight Plan Created Behind Closed Doors
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/05/18614124.php

No Justice No BART Takes the Truth to the Trains
NJNB Informs Public About Officer Pirone's Racism and Chief Gee's Defense of BART Officers
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611968.php

No Justice No BART
http://nojusticenobart.blogspot.com