The MBTA says it will no longer bus police to protests, following a request from members of the agency’s oversight board.
“At the direction of several members of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board, effective today, June 5, the MBTA will no longer provide transportation for non-MBTA law enforcement personnel to or from public demonstrations on MBTA buses,” Joe Pesaturo, a spokesman for the T, said in an email Friday.
Pesaturo noted that the move would still allow vehicles to transport MBTA Transit Police, but only as part of their regular public safety responsibilities safeguarding the system. It doesn’t ban individual law enforcement officers from buses or trains.
The new policy comes amid a groundswell of criticism from local transit advocates, elected officials, and FMCB members, after MBTA buses were spotted Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday shuttling groups of law enforcement officers to the sites of local protests in Boston against systemic racism and police violence.
Friend sent me this photo of an MBTA bus moving police in Boston just now. pic.twitter.com/0VJyFtM6zl
— Steve Koczela (@skoczela) June 5, 2020
A group of 60 unidentified MBTA workers even sent a letter Friday to General Manager Steve Poftak, arguing that the practice contributed to escalating tensions at the mostly peaceful protests.
“The MBTA can be a wonderful force for good in the city of Boston, especially for its black population,” the letter said. “Our buses bring economic access, opportunity, and freedom of movement to our bus-dependent riders, who are disproportionately black. For the MBTA to use those very same buses to bring police and their weapons to those very same people is heartbreaking, hypocritical, and embarrassing.”
Two members of the FMCB — vice chair Monica Tibbits-Nutt and Brian Lang — also spoke out in protest, as The Boston Globe first reported Thursday night. The board reportedly sent MBTA officials a directive to stop transporting officers to the demonstration.
“The function of the T is to provide public transportation for the riding public,” Lang told the Globe. “It’s not to get into the middle of the political fight, and most particularly to interfere with people who are trying to eliminate racist practices.”
Still, the union representing Massachusetts State Police troopers called the new policy “shameful,” noting that some of the protests were “marred” by looting, vandalism, and objects being thrown at law enforcement.
In a statement Friday decrying both the MBTA’s new policy and a decision by UMass Boston to ban police from using its parking lot as a staging area, the State Police Association of Massachusetts said they had “lost two valuable partners.” SPAM said the T’s “skilled drivers” had allowed officers to be moved in “a single, inconspicuous vehicle.”
‘The MBTA’s actions are shameful and overtly pander to the false rhetoric and anti-police agenda of the few,” the statement said. “More important, they fail to support our defense of the peaceful calls for change of the many. These actions place needless hurdles to the protection of life and property, and they put the public at large at risk.”
Highly scrutinized during normal times, the MBTA had already been under heightened criticism amid the recent police brutality protests over its decision to temporarily close certain stations near demonstrations, which officials attributed to safety concerns. Critics said the station closures and movement of police undercut Poftak’s stated “support for the people who are marching for justice.”
However, the MBTA’s decision Friday earned plaudits from activists, including the group TransitMatters, which thanked the FMCB and the MBTA for their “swift action.”
“We understand and appreciate how difficult these times have been for MBTA officials and employees” TransitMatters said in a statement. “But this we can say with certainty: we must never lose our moral compass, and in the present moment we must show solidarity with those who protest peacefully against a culture of police brutality against black people in America, and who demand change that is lasting.”
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