The agency had come under heavy criticism for helping law enforcement at a time when people were protesting police violence.
The MBTA will no longer shuttle local police forces to public demonstrations, the agency confirmed Friday.
The acknowledgment came more than 12 hours after the T’s board of directors directed the agency to stop dedicating vehicles to moving police to George Floyd protest sites.
“At the direction of several members of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board, effective today, June 5, the MBTA will no longer provide transportation for non-MBTA law enforcement personnel to or from public demonstrations on MBTA buses,” spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.
He added that buses will still be used to transport members of the agency’s own Transit Police force to stations and other MBTA facilities " in support of their public safety responsibilities safeguarding MBTA infrastructure."
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The T has become a local flashpoint in the nationwide protests over police violence and racism by providing buses to transport large numbers of police officers to protest locations, and for closing nearby stations, to the frustration of advocates and protesters.
Other transit agencies across the US have been criticized for closing transit service amid the unrest; elsewhere, some members of local transit unions have refused to transport people arrested during the demonstrations, including in Minneapolis, where Floyd was died.
Members of the Fiscal and Management Control Board, whose term is set to expire in just a few weeks, had directed the T to stop moving police, with some members saying it was inappropriate for the agency to help serve the institution that demonstrators are protesting. Police were seen unloading from MBTA buses as recently as Thursday in Jamaica Plain.
Boston Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
T leadership has also faced dissent from inside the organization, with employees circulating a letter that calls on General Manager Steve Poftak to end the practice. The letter, which has been signed by more than 50 employees whose names are not published publicly, said moving police to the protests “is not okay.”
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“The MBTA can be a wonderful force for good in the city of Boston, especially for its Black population. Our buses bring economic access, opportunity, and freedom of movement to our bus-dependent riders, who are disproportionately Black,” the letter said. “For the MBTA to use those very same buses to bring police and their weapons to those very same people is heartbreaking, hypocritical, and embarrassing.”
The letter also said the MBTA should reduce its own Transit Police budget and instruct its officers to not “join other police forces in any future violence against those protesting police brutality.”
Adam Vaccaro can be reached at adam.vaccaro@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @adamtvaccaro.
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June 06, 2020 at 01:05AM
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MBTA will no longer bus local police to protests - The Boston Globe
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