NMA Anonymous/BART cartoon

Anonymous posts pic of Linton Johnson's...Johnson

While the BART board was coming up with a protocol for when to deny its customers their ability to communicate freely, Anonymous posted a picture of BART spokesman Linton Johnson exposing his wiener while in the embrace of a shirtless man.
I debated whether or not to post the actual pic, but wth, I'm clearly not a principled professional journalist anyway, so here it is.

My deepest apologies.

War against BART

BART cuts cell phone service, then has to shut down stations due to protests

This week, Operation Empire State Rebellion has set its sites on San Francisco.
On Sunday, Anonymous hacked into the MyBART website and published the contact info of its customers. The group called for a protest at the SF Civic Center BART station, where BART police officers murdered a "wobbly drunk" homeless man after he threw a knife on July 3.
Two BART officers approached 45 year-old Charles Hill on the Civic Center platform and shot him dead within 23 seconds of their arrival. They did not claim to mistake their guns for tasers...because only an idiot would do that.
At least one witness has publicly stated that Hill was neither running away nor lunging at the officers. BART station video of the shooting shows an object (allegedly a knife) sliding along the ground past an officer's feet (after it was thrown against a train) as he fires his weapon. Several people are seen slowly walking away from the scene, clearly not fearing for their lives. However, they begin to hurry away once the police start shooting.

Allegedly, Hill had first thrown a bottle at the officers, although there is no video evidence. This naturally begs the question....if a "wobbly drunk" throws a bottle and then a knife at officers, is he still a threat? He had no weapons on him when he was shot, so how can the police claim "self-defense?" Why did they opt for guns instead of tasers?
Having any object tossed at you is certainly cause for alarm, but IMHO, it doesn't justify murder/manslaughter/death-related-to-an-officer-involved-shooting.
BART seems to think it does though, as neither officer has been disciplined. One of them has actually been hired by the FBI, who is obviously impressed with his police work (murdering a drunken homeless man within 23 seconds of encountering him).

Two weeks later, and just a few days after the SFPD murder of Kenneth Harding over transit fare evasion, a protest shutdown 3 BART stations in downtown San Francisco. Protestors held open the doors of a train, and one man attempted to climb on top of a train.
On August 11, another protest was called for at the Civic Center station. BART officials got wind of it, and shut off cell phone service in all of the downtown SF BART stations.
This was the same week that the UK government talked openly of cutting off internet service amidst nationwide rioting in response to the police murder of Mark Duggan.
The tactic by BART succeeded in thwarting the protest for that day, but it opened up a whole new can of worms for the transit agency.
Anonymous got involved, hacked the MyBART website, and called for a 3rd protest on Monday, August 15. That protest only temporarily closed down several stations, but passengers were frustrated by the lack of communication from BART about where and when service would be restored.

For the better part of two hours, passengers were allowed to disembark trains and stations, but were not allowed to enter them, forcing commuters to seek other ways home. Some sat on the steps down to the BART stations, simply waiting out the chaos. Others walked from station to station, chasing rumors — many originating from BART officials themselves — that they had reopened.
-SF Examiner

Cell phone service was not interrupted this time.

Here's a great video of BART mouthpiece Linton Johnson defending HIS decision to cut off cell phone service on August 11...even though he initially denied that BART had done it, and then blamed subordinates for the decision once it became clear that BART was responsible.

You can't really get more spineless than that.

Both the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced today that they have backed off from threatened legal action against BART over the denial of service.

Independence Day weekend lawlessness

Our founding fathers would be proud.
Over the holiday weekend, vandals in Minnesota caused $35,000 worth of damage to a state park that is closed due to governmental shutdown.

"This is just exactly the type of thing we're going to be seeing repeatedly as the shutdown goes forward," said Steve Morse, former lawmaker and DNR deputy commissioner who is now executive director of the Minnesota Environmental Partnership. "It shows once again how difficult it is to extricate the state from our lives, and the problems that are going to come to light once something like this happens."
-The Star-Tribune

Unfortunately, it wasn't just closed, unstaffed parks that inspired lawlessness over the Independence day weekend.

On Sunday night, a gas station/convenience store in Milwaukee was overrun by a mob shortly before midnight, and minutes later, a mob, possibly the same one, began attacking people in a nearby waterfront park. According to eyewitnesses, the attacks in the park were racially-motivated.

Cops and firefighters in Peoria, Illinois came under attack when they responded to a burning trash bin during a holiday fireworks display in the ghetto. Perhaps it was by a bunch of other city workers who got laid off after a career of paying into their own pension funds...unlike cops and firefighters.

On Monday night, a mob in Philadelphia attacked passengers on a 69th Street-bound El train full of passengers returning home after a fireworks show.

What's worse than a rampaging flash mob?
Gangster's with badges.

On Sunday evening, two officers responded to reports of a drunken man on the platform of the Civic Center station. Exactly what happened is unclear. What we know is that the man had a knife out and was also using a bottle as a weapon; that some sort of confrontation ensued; that, with passengers on the platform, at least one of the officers fired at least three shots; that one of the officers had a Taser but never used it; that the man was shot in the torso from unknown range, and that he's dead.

Chief Kenton Rainey says he doesn't know if deadly force was the only option. But, asked whether the officers followed protocol, he said Sunday morning, "From what I know at this point, yes, I'm comfortable with what has occurred."
-Inside Bay Area

Ummmm, as a frequent BART rider, I'm not at all comfortable with a 2nd BART cop killing in four years.