It's almost as though "public safety" has just become another excuse for the state to brutalize black and brown people.

If these cops were genuinely worried about exposure, they wouldn't be fucking manhandling a guy for being a potential vector. It's a show to them. https://twitter.com/phillyTRU/status/1248656214642262016

It looks like SEPTA is requiring that people wear masks on transit, but has NOTHING about it on their actual site, and nothing that I can find on the SEPTA app.

I take public transit here in Minneapolis, and have reduced how much I use it, but still have ended up on it a couple of times over the past month. Now that it's basically free (can't buy onboard fares or scan a card), there are a lot of homeless people using it more frequently.

They don't have access to masks - where would they get them? Where would they be sent? - a policy like this is far more likely to criminalize homelessness and poverty than actually keep people safe.

Notice that the cop in the first video (who is not in uniform) enters from the front of the bus. Minneapolis got rid of that weeks ago to keep drivers safe, and literally put up a bar to keep people from approaching the driver.

Not to mention that the cop is not, himself, wearing a mask! This is bad policy designed to criminalize poverty, which disproportionately impacts black and brown users of public transit.

This is bad.