By Rebecca Bowe and Steven T. Jones
BART police are once again embroiled in an excessive force controversy, this time for an incident yesterday involving a BART cop, a belligerent passenger, and injuries on both sides from a powerful collision with a plate glass window at the West Oakland BART Station. And once again, BART has reacted in a defensive fashion that only makes a bad situation worse, highlighting the long-overdue need for a civilian police oversight body.
Late yesterday afternoon, 37-year-old Michael Joseph Gibson of San Leandro was escorted off a Pittsburg-Bay Point bound train by an unidentified BART cop after he was yelling at other passengers and allegedly trying to pick a fight. The cop dragged him off the train, onto the platform, and appears to have rammed him into a window, causing the glass to shatter and injure them both, with footage of the incident going viral on You Tube.
While BART officials commendably moved to get out front of the situation by proactively holding a press conference, they’re clearly prejudging this incident in the officer’s favor by refusing to name him, defending what was at the very least sloppy police work that endangered both men, and making silly statements like “we don’t know what broke the glass.”