Just Like The Old West, Train Robbers Hit BART. Mismanagement Makes Things Even Worse!

BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders

By Demian Bulwa

April 24, 2017 Updated: April 24, 2017 12:48pm

 
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Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

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In this file photo, passengers board a train at the Castro Valley BART station.

A recent string of robberies on BART trains took a frightening turn when dozens
 of juveniles swarmed an Oakland station over the weekend and commandeered
 a train car, forcing passengers to hand over bags and cell phones and leaving at
 least two with head injuries, witnesses told the transit agency.

The incident — the first of its kind in recent memory — occurred around 9:30
 p.m. Saturday at Coliseum Station.

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According to a police officials, witnesses said 40 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently held open the doors of a Dublin-bound train car while others streamed inside, confronting and robbing and in some cases beating riders.

The juveniles “committed multiple strong-arm robberies of bags and cell phones,” said a police summary prepared after the incident. “At least two victims suffered head/facial injuries requiring medical attention.”

Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman, said Monday that seven robberies had occurred — with victims losing a purse, a duffel bag and five phones. Six people were robbed inside the train car, with a seventh confronted on the platform, she said.

The attack was quick, police reported, and the teenagers were able to retreat from the station and vanish into the surrounding East Oakland neighborhood before BART officers could respond. The train that was hit was held for about 15 minutes as authorities investigated the crime and tended to the injured.

“We are in the process of pulling all surveillance video and we will share with
 Oakland police, Oakland Unified School District and Oakland Housing Authority
 to see if they can help identify the minors,” Trost said. “We have had success
 with sharing images of juveniles with this group and identifying and making
arrests in the past.”

BART announced that it has hired a new police chief who worked previously in Southern California.
 Candice Nguyen reports.

Media: KTVU

The images cannot be shared publicly, she said, because the suspects appear to
 be minors.

BART is also checking with Oakland police to see if any other incidents Saturday
 night — such as a big house party being broken up — might shed light on the
 identity of the suspects.

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A series of robberies on BART trains in recent weeks has prompted the agency
 to increase patrols — though this was apparently the first takeover-style heist.

The incident is likely to present a challenge for BART, which hired a new police 
chief last week. The agency has struggled to contain fare evaders, and is in the
 midst of installing surveillance cameras in train cars after The Chronicle
 reported that most of the existing cameras were decoys.

San Francisco And New York Hit With Power Outages. A View Of Things To Come For Other Cities Or The Entire Country?

Massive power outage hits San Francisco, shuts down businesses, BART station, cable cars, traffic lights

By Sarah Ravani and Jill Tucker

Updated 11:10 am, Friday, April 21, 2017

 
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A large power outage leaves over 90,000 customers without power in San Francisco on April 21, 2017.

Media: jtucker@sfchronicle.com / sfchronicle.com

A massive power outage in San Francisco caused a blackout Friday morning in neighborhoods across the city, from the Financial District to the Presidio, forcing the closure of businesses, a BART station and a federal courthouse, officials said.

A spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said at least 90,000 customers lost power and that there had been a fire at a substation on Larkin Street. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the fire caused the outage, which swept through the city after 9 a.m., or was ignited as a result of the outage.

The San Francisco Fire Department was responding to numerous calls for service, including people stuck in elevators, but reported no injuries as of 10 a.m. Everywhere, sirens blared as engines maneuvered along jammed streets.

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Photo: Courtesy Benjamin W. Feldman / Twitter @BWFeldman

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Benjamin W. Feldman took this photo in the Montgomery BART Station during a power outage that hit large areas of San Francisco on April, 21, 2017.

Traffic lights were out in scores of intersections, and traffic was backing up on downtown streets as drivers grew frustrated and honked at each other.

BART’s Montgomery Station was closed due to the outage, and trains were running through the station without stopping. All cable cars were down, as were several Muni bus lines that typically run on electricity from overhead wires, including the 30, 45, 22, and 24. Shuttles were put in place to provide service, according to the Municipal Transportation Agency.

Muni trains, however, were still running both underground and above ground, though delays were expected due to the extensive problems with traffic lights. The subway stop at Montgomery Street was closed, with Muni trains — like BART trains — running through without stopping.

A number of schools in San Francisco were struck by the outage, including Spring Valley Science School, Sutro Elementary, Civic Center Secondary School, Alamo Elementary, Galileo Academy of Science and Technology and Cobb Elementary.

The Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse at 450 Golden Gate Ave. was among the many buildings closed down by the outage.

A PG&E spokesman said the company was trying to determine the cause of the outage, as well as how long it would take to restore power.

Daisy Prado, a 23-year-old South Bay resident, said she was sitting at her desk on the 14th floor of an office building on the 200 block of Montgomery Street in the Financial District when the power suddenly dropped out. She looked out the window and saw the buildings across the street go dark.

“They told us on an intercom to just stay calm,” Prado said. “People are hanging out the side of their buildings waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Prado said she left work, looking for a coffee shop with power and Wi-Fi, but hadn’t had any luck.

Aaron Trzesniewski was in a cable car near Sutter and Powell streets when the electricity cut out.

“It’s huge,” Trzesniewski said. “All the retailers are down, all the businesses, Starbucks, everybody.”

All around Union Square, the lights were out in the boutiques and restaurants, and rows of shuttered businesses extended into the Tenderloin and Chinatown. Workers stood outside, waiting, or in some cases they stood inside, with the doors closed.

A lot of people just milled about, drinking coffee or staring at their phones.

Check back for updates.

This Is The Way To Play The System!!

When government gets so big that it does not know what benefits it is providing for its employees, you get stories like the following. Is this problem only related to the BART system in San Francisco, we sincerely doubt it. In fact, it is probably more the rule than the exception.

Conservative Tom

Here is the Huffington Post take on the same issue: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/dorothy-dugger_n_3417426.html

An Expert Games The System

July 12, 2013 by Chip Wood 

PHOTOS.COM

You’ve got to hand it to Dorothy Dugger. The lady is an absolute genius when it comes to squeezing every possible penny from her former employer and from the taxpayers who ultimately foot the bill.

For more than 20 years, Dugger was employed by the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco. And even though she didn’t do a lick of work for BART last year, she still managed to earn more than any of the other 3,340 BART employees — including the person who replaced her as general manager.

Although it sounds impossible, she earned a gross salary of more than $333,000 in 2012 without putting in a single hour on the job. Hers was the top wage at BART. I’ll tell you in a moment how she did it.

But that’s not all. Check out the other ways the longtime government employee found to game the system. Her ultimate payoff could be in the millions of dollars.

The sad charade began in the spring of 2011, when BART’s board tried to fire her as general manager. However, in the process, the board failed to follow some of the State’s public-meeting laws. Rather than face a messy lawsuit over their mistake, the board agreed to pay Dugger $920,000 if she’d just go away.

Dugger agreed and tendered her resignation in May 2011. But that was far from the end of the story. She then said she wanted to start collecting for all of the vacation time she had earned but not used in the 20 years she worked for BART. Believe it or not, that came to nearly 3,100 hours of unused vacation time.

Unlike most businesses, which have a “use it or lose it” policy when it comes to vacations, BART allows its employees to bank the value of those unused vacation days. And get this: The “value” is calculated not at what the employee was earning at the time, but at whatever salary was being paid when the employee decides to collect on it. Because Dugger got a raise of nearly $100,000 a year when she became general manager of BART in 2007, her unused vacation time took a considerable jump in value. It was now worth a small fortune.

As a result, she was able to sit at home, not doing a lick of work, and still collect a full salary, for more than 19 months. Impressive, huh?

Dugger got a paycheck and full benefits from May 2011 until December 2012. That came to another half-a-million bucks the lady collected. But there’s more. For “working” those extra 19 months, Dugger also collected an additional $138,000 in vacation time and bonuses.

That’s right. Because of the screwy way BART calculates employee benefits, Dugger earned two more months of vacation time while she was, in effect, on a paid vacation. And she got “management bonuses” even though she didn’t manage a single employee. How’s that for a sweetheart deal?

Oh, and now that she is finally off of BART’s payroll, the goodies won’t stop. She’s now collecting a pension of $181,000 a year. That figure would have been lower, but those 80 weeks of unused vacation time also boosted her pension by more than $1,000 a month.

The San Jose Mercury News reported on the grand total of Dugger’s post-resignation payday. Here’s what it found:

Settlement payment to avert lawsuit, May, 2011: $920,000
Unused vacation time as of May 2011: About 3,100 hours
Gross pay, June 2011 to December 2012: $558,000
Cost to BART for benefits, June 2011 to December 2012: $138,000
Monthly pension payments, beginning January 2013: $15,083

I hope you’re as outraged as I am by this incredible abuse of what is clearly a very lax and overly generous system.

If you are, here’s something that should make you even more upset: There are literally millions of Americans who are counting on you to provide them with a cushy, comfortable retirement. And many of them will also game the system to make their retirement pensions as high as possible. (Putting in lots of expensive overtime the last year or two on the job is just one way many of them can jack up their retirement pay.)

And unlike private companies which can go bankrupt, taking many employees’ pension plans down with them, government employees can be confident the goodies will never end. They know that governments can raise taxes (and in the case of the Feds, simply print more money) to keep those pension checks coming.

But present and future government pensioners aren’t the only ones who are counting on taxpayers to make life better for them. Consider: The U.S. Department of Agriculture now reports that 101 million Americans now participate in at least one of the 15 food assistance programs that the agency offers. The total cost for those 15 programs in fiscal 2012 was a staggering $114 billion.

At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the number of full-time employees in the private sector came to 97,180,000 in 2012. In other words, there are more people getting food assistance in this country than there are people working full-time outside of government to pay for it.

If you think your share of the price tag has gotten bigger, you are absolutely right. Here’s how former Senator Phil Gramm summarized the situation in a column in The Wall Street Journal:

In 1980, the top 1% and 5% of income earners in America paid 19.1% and 36.9% of total federal income taxes. Today, the top 1% and 5% pay 37.4% and 59.1%. Meanwhile, 41.6% of American earners now pay no federal income taxes.

The bottom line is that there are fewer and fewer of us picking up the tab for more and more freeloaders. No wonder our share of the bill is getting higher.

It’s a battle between the taxpayers and the tax receivers. And right now, the tax receivers are winning.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.