Assaults leave Muni drivers fearful for safety as agency beefs up security

A Muni bus displays a message "Please Call Police 911" as an altercation temporarily halts Fillmore St. service on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018, in San Francisco A Muni bus displays a message "Please Call Police 911" as an altercation temporarily halts Fillmore St. service on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018, in San Francisco Photo: Noah Berger / Special To The Chronicle Photo: Noah Berger / Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Assaults leave Muni drivers fearful for safety as agency beefs up security 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

The 5-Fulton bus had just pulled into the temporary Transbay Terminal on Dec. 11 for a three-minute stop.

It wasn’t operator Michelle Moore’s usual drive; she had picked up some extra hours by driving the line that day. A man walked through the front doors of her coach, reached around her safety screen and threw a cup of vomit at her.

“Into my mouth, all over my eyes, it went everywhere,” Moore recalled, shoulders shaking, at a gathering of Muni drivers on Sept. 7. It was just one of five assaults Moore has experienced since starting the job in 2001.

Each year, hundreds of verbal and physical assaults on Muni’s roughly 2,000 operators are reported, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. At its peak in 2015, there were 768 reports of altercations involving Muni operators. So far this year, 316 assaults have been reported.

SFMTA has a task force working to reduce those numbers, said spokesman Paul Rose. Changes the agency has implemented so far, he said, include new buses with driver enclosures and adding silent alarms to immediately request San Francisco police.

At the recent meeting, nearly a dozen drivers rattled off the number of times they had been assaulted in their careers — two, three, even seven times. Those assaults included death threats, punches to the face and getting spit on.

Barry Chamberlain, who worked for Muni for 17 years, was doing a routine sweep of his bus on May 20 before clocking out for the evening.

Chamberlain tried three times to wake a man sleeping in the back of the 22-Fillmore line.

“I’m not a problem person or a problem operator,” Chamberlain said at the meeting. “I’m very professional, like all my sisters and brothers here now.”

When he returned to the front to page dispatch for help removing the man, he saw stars. The man ran up behind him, punching, choking and throwing him off the coach. Chamberlain uses a wheelchair as a result.

The policy for operator assaults is to pull over and call the control center or Transportation Management Center to dispatch first responders and contact management.

Some operators said that after reporting their assaults, management allegedly told them that they were the initial aggressors. Others said that inspectors told them not to report their assaults.

“After being victimized, abused, they’re being treated like they’re the criminals,” said Roger Marenco, president of Transport Workers Union Local 250-A, which represents Muni workers.

Rose denied that the agency did so and said its policy is to prioritize the operator’s safety in the event of an assault.

“We would never dissuade operators from making an assault report nor ask operators what they did to provoke it,” he said. “We would never force them into service if they are injured. In fact, it is our policy to ask an operator if they need any assistance, or if they need to go out of service, even if it is a verbal assault.”

Drivers said the fear of being assaulted is inhibiting.

“The reason why I feel like I can’t function behind this seat is because I have no security or safety,” said operator Jay Epps, who barricaded himself inside his 22-Fillmore coach when a man tailed him to the Muni barn.

Epps said the man repeatedly threatened to kill him.

Operators said that there are several possible solutions. One suggestion is getting rid of the policy allowing back-door entry to reduce the number of fare evaders, who drivers say are typically the perpetrators of physical assaults.

Dispatch also needs to respond better, other operators said. Pressing the “priority” button, which is supposed to immediately page dispatch and get inspectors and police to the scene, is slow and even dangerous at times.

Muni operator Deanna Lockridge, a 12-year veteran of the fleet, said that she paged for help once in 2012 and the dispatcher who called back put the call on the bus’ speaker, alerting the suspect to her call.

Although the suspect was on his way out of the 22-Fillmore at 16th and Mission streets, he started spitting and throwing punches at her, Lockridge said.

SFMTA also needs to hire more people to manage the Transportation Management Center, which manages 2,000 buses daily, Marenco said. On a tour of the facility, he said that he noticed the center’s state-of-the-art technology, but only “three to four” workers inside.

Rose said that SFMTA has 45 employees working in its control centers and is working to increase staffing.

National legislation is also in the works, Rose said. Reps. Grace Napolitano, D-Norwalk (Los Angeles County), and John Katko, R-N.Y., and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., introduced the Bus Operator and Pedestrian Protection Act in June. It directs transit agencies to develop risk-reduction programs and report assault data to the National Transit Database.

But without implementing immediate changes, operators said, people will continue driving in fear of being hurt at work.

“It’s not just us that are endangered on these buses, it’s the public,” Moore said.

Gwendolyn Wu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu