Not a Simpson

Yeah, okay. BART protests.

So there was a much-ballyhooed and predicted BART protest yesterday. It shut down four stations in San Francisco.

For the uninformed, those stations were Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, and Civic Center. If you're going into San Francisco from the East Bay, those are the first four stations you'd arrive at. They're the main destinations for tourists, shoppers, etc.

Anyone who works downtown pretty much has to use those stations to get out of the city.

And BART's police shut them down around 5:30pm in response to disruptions caused by protesters.

Where to begin?

First of all, I'm puzzled at the behavior of the protesters. They're protesting the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man on July 3.

I wasn't present for this, but by all accounts, a guy WITH A KNIFE threatened police (and apparently threw said knife at a BART cop).

I do believe there's a good argument for self-defense in the officer's reaction. I do not believe BART police carry TASERS at this point, but I may be wrong. I really don't pay that much attention to what BART cops are carrying.

Now, I get that people are sensitive about BART cops and gunplay. Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART police officer while Grant was face down on the ground. Again, I wasn't present for this, but it seems to me that the shooting was entirely unjustified in Grant's case. The officer who killed Grant certainly did not seem to get a stiff sentence for that shooting, but I am not aware of all the facts in the case.

And the shooting of the knife-wielding man is a very different scenario.

So the protesters are going apeshit and disrupting people's workdays after a long, tired Monday, to protest a cop shooting some guy who was threatening people on the BART platform with a knife.

I do not understand, or with the facts as they are now do I sympathize, with this protest. This is bullshit. Let the goddamn courts figure out if the cop was right to shoot a knife-wielding man or not.

Now... the flipside. BART almost had my sympathy over this protest situation. I don't particularly agree with their decision last week to shut down cellular and wireless service in the stations. It wouldn't affect me (my POS phone barely gets a signal in a BART station, for all their accessibility setup), but the principle of the matter is that BART acted very... ah... totalitarian.

So the protest happens anyway yesterday. It disrupts service on at least one platform. BART's reaction? Shut down four stations and keep people from entering said stations.

And that fixes the disruption of service...? There were hundreds of people essentially marooned in San Francisco for over two hours because BART wouldn't let people on to the platforms.

That's a solution to a protest? Really?

Seems to me that someone in charge of BART security is spending a little too much time taking tips from shows like "24". There had to be a better way to handle that situation.

Jesus... what a pooch-screw this has become.