CBS Bay Area-
New data from Bay Area Rapid Transit police shows officers are issuing a disproportionate amount of citations over so-called “quality of life” issues to African American passengers.
While black BART riders make up 12 percent of the system’s ridership, in the last two years they received approximately half of the quality of life citations for offenses such as fare evasion, loud music, panhandling, smoking and other minor offenses, according to the data released Friday.
The vast majority of the quality of life citations involve fare evasion, and black passengers received 52 and 50 percent of the approximately 28,000 fare evasion tickets issued in 2018 and 2019, respectively. By contrast, white people make up 44 percent of BART riders and received 14 percent of the fare evasion citations in both 2018 and 2019.
The California Right 