By Tim Redmond
The shooting of Oscar Grant, which was captured on several videos, may become for the BART police what Rodney King was in LA: An incident so outrageous it sparks public demand for reform.
The BART Board is still largely missing in action here (although Tom Radulovich, who represents San Francisco, says he supports a move for civilian oversight and will push it if he can get a few other votes). But Assembly Member Tom Ammiano told me he’s looking at what the state Legislature can do here, and Sup. David Campos told me he’s going to introduce a resolution calling on BART to create a credible civilian oversight system.
I talked about this on KQED’s Forum this morning, and urged people to call the BART board members and demand action. The problem, frankly, is that a lot of the people on the BART board are lazy — they don’t want to put in the time or do the work necessary to properly monitor the 200 armed officers they send out to patrol the trains. That’s unacceptable, and they need a swift kick in their collective asses. Maybe a push by the state, and all of the cities tha BART passes through, will help.
By the way, BART’s chief spokesman, Linton Johnson, is kind of a problem. He walked off in the middle of the show ths morning, saying someone on his staff had called in sick. And in an interview last night, when he was asked why BART still hasn’t interviewed the officer, he suggested we all look at it “from the officer’s perspecitive.”
Uh, no, Mr. Johnson — you’re management. You have to look at it from the public’s perspective.