Naked Acrobat Terrorizes BART Riders

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

A video emerged Monday depicting a bizarre incident at a San Francisco BART station last month, with a naked man accosting several passengers and doing flips, handstands, the splits and other gymnastic maneuvers on the BART turnstiles. The video, recorded May 10 by a BART station agent at the 16th Street Mission Station, shows the man lunge at and attack several passengers, and at one point pound the ground while passengers step gingerly around him.

The video also shows a BART maintenance worker trying to block the man from getting close to passengers. The station agent recording the video helps one woman, who is visibly distressed, hide from the man in the booth. “Oh my God, I cannot believe that,” the station agent is heard saying as the man does a handstand. The man was identified by BART police as 24-year-old Yeiner Garizabalo. Friends said Tuesday he goes by Yeiner Perez and is a dedicated acrobat and performer. The episode, they said, was strongly out of character.

The man was arrested and held for a psychiatric examination. The BART worker was given a day off with pay and treated to dinner by supervisors.  The union for BART employees is using the below video, which has gone viral with almost 300K views in 24 hours, as part of their ongoing contract negotiations regarding job hazards.  Nudity ahead.

BART To Strike On Monday

Union employees of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) are set to begin a strike on Monday.

Bay Area residents face the prospect of a commuting nightmare Monday morning after the president of BART's second-largest union announced that it will go on strike at the end of service Sunday night. If Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, which represents about 900 train operators, station agents and power workers, follows through on its strike threat it will be the transit agency's first strike since September 1997, when a five-day strike created havoc for commuters. At a news conference outside the union's office across the street from the Lake Merritt BART station, ATU Local 1555 President Jesse Hunt said, "We have no choice" but to go on strike after BART board members voted 9-0 earlier in the day to impose pay and work rules on the union, effective immediately. Hunt cited the fact that the implementation of terms and conditions of employment brought members of the ATU under a contract "far worse than the contract that was in front of our union this week" as the main reason behind the strike.

BART averages 340,000 passenger trips on weekdays.

BART Cop Arrested In Shooting Of Unarmed Passenger

New videos have surfaced in the case of the SF Bay Area transit cop who shot an unarmed and unresisting BART passenger in the back on New Year's Day. (This is the incident referred to in yesterday's quote from Al Sharpton.) The shooting prompted days of rioting in Oakland.

The BART officer was arrested yesterday. The Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Black LGBT Coalition will hold a memorial vigil for the passenger, 22 year-old Oscar Grant, today in Los Angeles' Leimert Park. Pam Spaulding has more.

(Via - HRC Back Story)