On behalf of No Justice No BART, thank you for mobilizing your police force in mass last Thursday (February 19th).
It must have cost you a lot. We didn't have an action planned, but we were interested to see how you would respond. We know you are tens of millions of dollars in the red on your budget. How much are you willing to spend to deal with protests directed at your police department?
So it sounds like you are digging in for the long haul. Youl'l do what it takes to get things back to normal, to business as usual. But thats the irony right, the more you do to fight us, the further from business as usual you will get. The further you will get from a return to what you've considered "normalcy" at the bart board
This is not about whether we need cops or not. This is about whether we need you 9 people, Whether you are the folks we want to entrust with running an armed police force.
Still, you publicly insist that you need the power to police us. But here we are now, and we see that you havent been responsible with those police powers in the past. And you havent atoned for your failure of responsibility. And the public doesn't trust you. And you know all this. So what makes anyone think that this institution can be responsible in the future, because you aren't being responsible now, given the known facts.
These facts that don't need to be investigated. These facts that demand certain action from you now. And heres what we demand from you, right now:
Fire Dorothy Dugger.
Hire someone who will fire Chief Gee.
Fire Chief Gee.
Hire someone who will fire Tony Pirone.
Heres what we want in an investigation:
An independent investigation of the other BART officers present during Oscar's murder! Each individual officer involved must be named, along with a list of possible or probable violations of police policy and procedure, as well as any potential criminal liability. Upon completion of the investigation, all officers suspected of procedural violations must be fired immediately, and any officers suspected of criminal wrongdoing must be fully charged and prosecuted by the District Attorney.
Heres what we want longer term:
Abolish the BART Police dept! Divest yourself of the power to police our communities.
When you are done posturing for the cameras, when you go home tonight, take a moment to reflect. Be honest with yourself. Do you really want to be in the policing business? You ran for this position to oversee public transit not a police department. Do you enjoy the process you are in right now? Because the path you are laying out will keep you in this process for the forseeable future. So are you you prepared to be doing this kind of work, this kind of oversight, having this kind of meeting, dealing with these kinds of issues, for the forseeable future?
