BART officials defend police tactics at protest

[AsahinaKimi]

S.F. police officers put on helmets before closing down the BART Powell Street Station during a protest Thursday.

BART officials on Friday defended police tactics used to control a Thursday night protest at Powell Street Station that resulted in handcuffing and detaining of at least a half-dozen professional and student journalists - including a Chronicle reporter - for as long as two hours.

"It was extremely concerning that BART police would detain and handcuff a Chronicle reporter who was trying cover a story of great public interest," said Ward Bushee, editor and executive vice president of The Chronicle. "We recognize that BART police officers have a job to do, but they also must allow reporters to cover the news."

About a half hour into the protest, just before 5:30 p.m., BART Deputy Police Chief Daniel Hartwig ordered officers to "Close it in, close it in," said Chronicle reporter Vivian Ho, who suddenly found herself in a group of 30 to 40 protesters and journalists, surrounded by police who were not letting anyone out.

At 6:45 p.m., while she was interviewing a protester, a pair of BART police officers ordered Ho to put her hands behind her back and handcuffed her, saying she was being taken into custody for "disrupting railroad service."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/09/BARM1L2LP1.DTL#ixzz1Xd0XPL6D

[truedelphi]

1. Most excellent. The whole reason that the protesters are out there

Protesting is because the Oakland Police and the BART police are such thugs. (Not all of them, but a good percentage.)

The news reporters usually act like the people protesting are trouble makers with too much time on their hands. But if I had a kid that had been killed by some BART cop shooting him with a gun he mistook for a tazer, etc, I'd be out there too.

Now that the police are roughing up the reporters, maybe the reporters will get the message: the police are over reacting, and using inappropriate force, as well as under policing. (For every protester that a police person tangles with, that cop faces one less real criminal.)