It’s pretty clear that people are still mad at BART for cutting off cell phone service — and that the agency is doing a miserable job of responding. The latest protest featured BART cops arresting people for nothing more than speaking out in the station, which leaves the train system in the horrible position of attacking First Amendment rights. And the protests are likely to continue, making life difficult for commuters and discouraging people from taking BART.
And it’s all so pointless.
All the anonymous protesters want is for BART to apologize and promise not to cut off cell phone service again. That seems like a really easy solution. Cutting off service was a bad idea in the first place; why not admit it, enact a policy against future disruptions and call it a day? How hard can that be? What level of arrogance is required to ignore a simple way of resolving an increasingly intractable conflict?
The BART directors, never a blue-ribbon bunch, need to get their collective act together. Because this is really stupid.