Reports are that yesterday (30 April 2012) at about 3pm three uniformed METRO police officers accosted about a dozen passengers getting off the #219 bus from downtown to the West Road Park and Ride and asked for ID.

What does this have to do with METRO’s mission?

Not a thing. METRO should be encouraging ridership, not discouraging it by demanding riders’ papers.

(The comparison is inescapable: requiring papers for internal travel is a hallmark of modern totalitarian regimes.)

It’s hard not to see this as a deliberate slap in the face by METRO to those concerned citizens who appeared less than a week ago at METRO’s board meeting to protest METRO’s inviting TSA into our community and performing (as reported—and now denied—by METRO) “random bag checks.”

It’s as though METRO is saying, “look: we don’t need those vipers from TSA to help us act like fascist thugs; we can do it in white neighborhoods as well as black neighborhoods; and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”