Community

BART Police Respond to Alleged Dancing on Train, Arrest and Assault Young Woman

Published

12 years ago

April 25, 2014

When 19-year-old Nubia Bowe was returning home on BART with friends on the evening of March 21, she had no idea that it would be the worst night of her life.

The evening ended up with her being accused by police of intimidating a witness and her friends being handcuffed for dancing on a BART train. She was slammed to the ground and struck repeatedly, arrested and sent to the county jail for four days. She now faces now four misdemeanors and was kicked out of school.

That’s what happened when BART police responded to a complaint that young men were dancing and soliciting money on a train at the Lake Merritt station. Bowe and her friends, who had not seen anyone dancing on the train, were picked out as the culprits by one witness, who later recanted.

However, her friends were handcuffed and detained, even though a train full of witnesses repeatedly told police the young people were not the perpetrators.

But the arrest was the only the beginning of the ordeal. Bowe was slammed to the ground, handcuffed and accused of resisting arrest, among other charges.

When she reached the county jail at Santa Rita, she says officers beat her for allegedly attacking one of the guards, and she was put in restraints, similar to a straight jacket. She was placed in a wrap which had handcuffs attached and a belt connecting her upper body to her ankles.

As a result of the arrest, was kicked out of her training program at Treasure Island Job Corps.

When contacted by the Oakland Post, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost forwarded the police log, which stated, “A BART sergeant and officer were flagged down on a complaint of patrons on a train dancing, playing music and creating a disturbance.

“They did not cooperate and became combative. One suspect bit one officer causing a moderate laceration on his left arm. Two suspects were cited and released, one was booked into the Alameda County Jail.”

“If there are any reports of police misconduct, we encourage people to contact our Office of the Independent Police Auditor, who will conduct an investigation,” said Trost.

By press time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office had not responded to the Post’s questions.

The March 21 incident began when BART officers responded to a complaint that two young, male dancers were soliciting for money on the train. The two men who were accompanying Bowe were approached by the officers at the Lake Merritt station, with a witness who at first identified the young men as the suspects.

The men were instructed by the officers to get off the train for questioning. During the questioning, train riders told the officers that the three suspects had not engaged in the solicitation of passengers and that young people they were looking for had already left the train at the West Oakland station.

“We were on the train minding our own business when a man entered the train with two BART officers and told them it was us,” said Levi Allen, one of Bowe’s friends. “The guy came from a different car, and we had never seen him before.”

Bowe and her two friends are African American. She was a full-time student at a local security-training program. Repeatedly trying to explain that her friends were innocent, she told the officers that they were violating the young men’s rights.

By this time, BART passengers were loudly calling out to the officers, saying the young people were innocent, and the police forcibly removed Bowe from the train.

The witness who had initially identified Bowe and her friends as the perpetrators later told officers they weren’t the right group.

“Once they pulled me off the train, I was first slammed to the ground and then thrown against the wall,” said Bowe. “The officers pushed me back down and continued to elbow and knee me in my back. My mouth was full of blood by then. The whole time this was happening, I repeatedly said ‘I am not resisting arrest. You are violating my civil rights.’”

When Bowe’s friends protested the young woman’s treatment, they were taken upstairs away from the conflict. Some of the passengers recorded the confrontation on their cell phones showing footage of Bowe pinned down by officers while screaming for help.

Bowe was taken to the Lake Merritt station holding cell in preparation for transport to Santa Rita Jail on one felony and three misdemeanor charges.

When she arrived at Santa Rita, she was taunted, battered and denied medical care, as well as the right to make a phone call for three days. Bowe is 5’1” and weighs 105 pounds.

“Three male guards and one female guard came in my cell and beat me up,” said Bowe. “They hit me and then said that I assaulted one of them. So they chained my wrists to my ankles and tipped me over onto the urine-soaked ground so I couldn’t get up.

“I could tell they were trying to break my spirit.”

She was in custody for four nights. Her bail was set at $120,000.

Though the felony charge was eventually dropped, the arrest resulted in Bowe being kicked out of her training program, where she was only two months away from graduating.

“This case represents another example of racial profiling by BART police,” said civil-rights Attorney Dan Siegel, who represents Bowe. “Although the end isn’t as tragic, its similar to the Oscar Grant case. Some person made a complaint about dancing on BART, Nubia and her friends were not the people dancing, and yet, she still faces two sets of charges for allegedly fighting with police and resisting arrest.”

In light of the charges, Bowe’s family and friends have started a group against police brutality called the One Shot Away Coalition. The coalition is saying that people of color are all one shot away from incarceration and/or death.

A trial date on the BART charges has been set for Aug. 5, and the pre-trial hearing on the Santa Rita charges is scheduled for May 19.

“She will forever have to deal with the trauma of her experiences,” said Carroll Fife, Bowe’s godmother. “We want justice for Nubia and those young men who were cuffed, detained, cited and released. They were not read their rights. The district attorney is pressing for jail time, so we have to get prepared for a long fight with help from the community to get the word out.”

Anyone who has information about the case or who wishes to learn more should go to www.facebook.com/oneshotawayba?fref=ts.

Video from the arrest at Lake Merritt BART station can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2myBE5Qe0.

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At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses. The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Toks Omishakin, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, was one of the speakers at the event. Photo by Shellee Fisher Photography and Design.

By Calvin Naito, Special to The Post

On June 4, a national nonprofit named the Equity in Infrastructure Project (EIP) – which aims to increase public construction contracting opportunities for small and historically underutilized businesses – held a day-long event in downtown San Francisco to rally supporters and build momentum to its cause.

It was attended by more than 100 individuals from public agencies, private firms, and other organizations committed to increasing contracting opportunities with governmental agencies, thereby creating more competition and lowering public costs.

The EIP event was held the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in conjunction with BuildIT, which aims to increase contracting opportunities for LGBT-owned businesses.

At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses.

The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Following the workshop, BuildIT hosted a VIP evening reception honoring EIP, whose principals – Phil Washington, John Procari, and Rick Jacobs – accepted the award.

The event also set in motion the coalition’s efforts to implement recommendations from EIP’s “Procurement for Prosperity: A Playbook.”

The Playbook is a practical guide for public agency leaders and procurement and contracting practitioners to grow the capacity of small and first-time contractors, strengthen competition, and deliver better value for taxpayers.

Toks Omishakin, Secretary of the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), a long-time EIP supporter, also told attendees, “This is about commitment. This has been a life’s work. This is a tailwind moment.”

The event’s presenting sponsor was Hub International, one of the largest insurance brokerages in the nation, which was joined by partners Travelers Insurance and the State Compensation Insurance Fund.

After the pledge-signing ceremony, attendees participated in a workshop in which they examined the policies, practices, and programs needed to meet EIP goals, learned from practitioners, and identified next steps toward utilizing the Playbook.

Ingrid Meriwether, formerly of Merriwether & Williams Insurance Services (MWIS) and current president of Hub International’s Aligned Risk Management, MWIS, described the hard-fought lessons she and her MWIS team have learned over the last three decades administering contractor development programs (CDPs) for the City and County of San Francisco, Alameda County, City of Los Angeles, LA Metro, and other municipalities.

The CDPs help small and local construction firms win public infrastructure contracts with these government agencies. The program provides bonding assistance, contract financing, technical support, training, and other services to underrepresented businesses funded by public agencies who seek greater contracting participation with these firms.

Merriwether said programs like these “break down systemic barriers, create greater fairness, and save taxpayers money by enabling more competition. The contractor development programs have, cumulatively, over two decades, helped contractors access over $1 billion in bonding, supporting over $380 million in awarded contracts, and maintaining a loss ratio 250 times lower than the industry average – while saving participating municipalities more than $27 million in contracting costs as a result of enabling more competition.”

Rick Jacobs, EIP co-founder and co-chair urged attendees make plans to meet again in the near future “to continue building on this work, share progress on organizational commitments, and discuss how we can collectively advance the goals of the EIP pledge.”

For more information on the EIP and to access a copy of the Playbook, go online to https://equityininfrastructure.org/

Calvin Naito is communications manager for Equity in Infrastructure Project.

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Oakland Museum Presents Landmark Retrospective Celebrating Beloved Bay Area Artist Mildred Howard

“Poetics of Memory” coincides with a year of major recognition for Howard. In 2026, she received the California Arts Council’s 50th Anniversary Award, honoring artists whose work has shaped California’s cultural and civic life, as well as the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Artist Impact Award. In 2025, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her transformative contributions to American cultural life.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Mildred Howard. Photo by Christine Cueto for the Oakland Museum of California, 2025.

Special to The Post

The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” the first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, on June 12.

The exhibition spans five decades of Howard’s influential work, bringing together immersive installations, found-object sculptures, archival materials, and new commissions that explore memory, identity, and power in American life.

Howard was born in San Francisco in 1945 and raised in the East Bay, where she went on to study Afro-Haitian dance, make and sell clothing, and experiment with collage and sculpture.

Her multimedia art practice emerged from these experiences, later becoming associated with West Coast conceptual art, San Francisco funk, and a vibrant community of artists like Oliver Jackson, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders. Since the 1970s, she has used found materials and family stories to explore memory—both individual and collective.

At OMCA, visitors enter “Poetics of Memory” through a series of intimate galleries featuring Howard’s early mixed-media pieces and sculptures, along with a large video projection of a number of her public artworks.

Together, they emphasize Howard’s interest in everyday objects as powerful carriers of individual and shared stories. Highlights include collages that remix images of the artist herself; found-object sculptures like The History of the United States with a few Parts Missing (2007) that address omissions in dominant narratives; and public works like “Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges” (2001) that transform urban space into a meditation on access and labor.

This culminates in a richly detailed “studio” environment, where works in progress, archival exhibition flyers, historic photographs of Howard and her community, postcards from fellow artists, and other materials offer insight into her creative process and daily life.

The exhibition then opens into a high-ceilinged, dramatically lit space that brings together Howard’s signature immersive installations. On one end, “Crossings” (1997/2026) – a field of hundreds of ceramic eggs leading to an ornate mirror – suggests cycles of birth, motherhood, and transition, while drawing on the emotional echoes of the Middle Passage. On the other end, “Blackbird in a Red Sky” (a.k.a. “Fall of the Blood House”) (2002) – a red glass shack bordered by a pond – also uses reflection and transparency to draw viewers into the work and prompt consideration of themes of identity and home.

Howard’s newest video installation, “Moving Stills” (2026), repurposes never-before-seen family footage she took as a teenager on a train trip to the American South. Projected onto cascading layers of translucent fabric that stretch across an entire gallery wall, the piece immerses viewers in a layered meditation on memory, migration, and time.

The “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory” exhibit will be on display through Oct. 11 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, CA 94612. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours on Fridays to 9 p.m.

This story is sourced from the Oakland Museum of California press office.

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Alameda County

Ferry Fares to Increase July 1 as Ridership Hits Record Highs

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Courtesy photo.

By Mike Aldax, The Richmond Standard

Starting July 1, the standard adult fare for the San Francisco Bay Ferry route between Richmond and San Francisco will increase to $5.20, up from the current $4.90.

Discounted fares for eligible passengers, including youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and Clipper START users, will rise to $2.60 from the current $2.40. Children under 5 will continue to ride for free.

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

The adjustments are part of a systemwide fare update approved by the agency’s Board of Directors, which is moving away from a flat 3% annual increase to route-specific pricing for the 2027 and 2028 fiscal years.

This fare update arrives as San Francisco Bay Ferry celebrates a historic May, transporting 301,270 passengers. The record-breaking figure represents an 8% increase over May 2025 and marks the third consecutive month of record-setting ridership.

Furthermore, it is the sixth month in a row that passenger numbers have exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Weekend travel has been a primary driver of this growth, with average weekend ridership seeing a 56% increase compared to pre-pandemic trends.

The agency states that the fare adjustments are necessary to ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of public ferry services. By shifting to route-specific adjustments, the agency aims to offset rising operating costs while maintaining the high levels of service frequency and reliability.