BART says it’s looking into an incident earlier this week in which a man was detained and handcuffed after a transit agency police officer spotted him eating a breakfast sandwich.
BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said videos of the incident, which occurred about 8 a.m. Monday on the platform of the Pleasant Hill Station, has been forwarded to the agency’s independent police auditor for review.
One video, posted Friday to Facebook and Twitter, shows the sandwich-eating man, who appears to be African American, protesting that he had been singled out by the BART police officer, who appears to be white.
Videos of the incident first appeared on the Facebook account of “Bill Gluckman” â an apparent pseudonym. The principal officer in the case, identified by his nameplate as D. McCormick, refers to the man as “Mr. Foster.”
The platform video begins after McCormick had made contact with the man.
“You’re eating,” the officer says, restraining the man by holding his backpack. “So what?” the man replies. “It’s against the law. … It’s a violation of California law. I have the right to detain you,” the officer says. “No you don’t,” the man responds. “Can you please let my backpack go?” A moment later, the officer calls for backup and tells the man he’s “going to jail” for resisting arrest.
Tone Oliver on Twitter @OGpenn @JaniceForBART @rachelswan “You’re eating.” https://t.co/ZTogR0CpCQ
The longer version of the footage, on Facebook, shows the dispute continuing for more than seven minutes before other officers arrive. At one point, after McCormick had asked for the man’s name, the man bursts out with a series of homophobic slurs.
“I’ve missed two trains because of your old faggot ass,” he says. “You f___in’ fag. Ask your mama what my name is, that’s what you can do.”
Eventually, three other officers arrive on the scene. One handcuffs the man and leads him from the platform.
In a second video, McCormick explains to a woman who was apparently accompanying the man that he had gone to the platform because of a report of a possibly intoxicated woman. While walking down the platform, he said, he encountered the man eating the sandwich.
“So you decided to forget about the bitch that’s drunk and wanted to f__k with him for eating a sandwich?” the woman asks. “… So you decided to turn and focus on the black guy eating a sandwich?”
“He was directly in front of me, and I simply asked him, ‘Hey, there’s no eating on BART,’ ” McCormick says.
BART said in a tweet that “no matter how you feel about eating on BART, the officer saw someone eating and asked him to stop, when he didn’t he was given a citation.” The agency said the man was handcuffed after he initially refused to provide his name.
SFBART on Twitter @ToneOliver @sal_castaneda @SFBARTalert We have confirmed w/ the Deputy Chief he was not arrested. He was cited for eating which is a violation of state law. No matter how you feel about eating on BART, the officer saw someone eating and asked him to stop, when he didn’t he was given a citation.
Trost said the man was cited for an alleged violation of state penal code section 640(b)(1), which prohibits eating or drinking on California public transit systems. The maximum penalty for a first-time violation is $250 or 48 hours of community service.
BART’s independent police auditor, Russell Bloom, said his office is collecting evidence on the incident before deciding whether to launch a formal investigation. The evidence includes video from social media and footage from cameras at the station and officers’ body cameras.
Although frequent BART patrons can testify that eating and drinking on trains and station platforms is an everyday occurrence, citations for eating or drinking in the system’s paid areas appear to be exceedingly rare. Trost said it would take a California Public Records Act request to produce a number of cited eating or drinking offenses, but added “we do enforce and if an officer sees someone eating they issue a citation.”
An SFGATE inquiry into the issue a couple of years ago found that the agency issued 11 eating/drinking citations in the final nine months of 2016, equivalent to one every 8 million rides.
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