Cops Allegedly Beat Up a Black Woman Over Fare Evasion. Now, She’s Suing.

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Multiple Bay Area transit cops are accused of beating up a screaming Black woman until she bled, vomited, and urinated on herself—all because she was suspected of fare evasion, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the woman in California on Wednesday.

While SaTae’zja Devereaux admitted she didn’t pay the fee needed to ride with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in a recent interview with KTVU, she believes cops still shouldn’t have brutalized her over the missed payment—which was worth about $3.50 at the time of the Dec. 31, 2019, incident in San Leandro, according to her lawyer.

“No officer should be beating people up over fare evasion—essentially minor things. I mean, this is akin to a jaywalking ticket,” Adanté Pointer, the civil rights attorney representing Devereaux, told VICE News. “It’s also [something] that many people do, although we don’t talk about it. You go into a movie, and you might see two movies instead of one—you know, catch the end of another movie on your way out. Or you’re at Taco Bell or something and you get a soda, and you drink some, and put some more in your cup.”

“None of these are things that you think should lead to you being punched in the face multiple times, held down with knees in your back until you can’t breathe and you’re throwing up and spitting up blood and urinate on yourself in public,” Pointer said. 

Devereaux’s lawsuit, which names three individual BART officers as defendants, alleges that she had just left work on New Year’s Eve and was on her way home when she was approached by police while exiting a San Leandro transit station. 

Cops accused her of fare evasion and asked for her ID—allegedly without explaining why. Though Devereaux asked whether she could just pay what she owed, she was refused. Then, according to the lawsuit, “without warning Ms. Devereaux of their intent to use force nor attempting to deescalate the situation,” the officers took Devereaux to the ground. At one point, one of the cops allegedly punched her in the face, according to her lawsuit.

“The three officers placed their body weight on top of Ms. Devereaux and pressed her down on the ground for over seven minutes,” the lawsuit alleges. “The combined weight of the officers made it extremely difficult for her to breathe. She repeatedly cried out to the three officers that she was unable to breathe. They ignored her cries.”

Eventually, cops carted Devereaux off to jail on charges of resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, and fare evasion—with a bond of $15,000, despite her not having a criminal record, according to the lawsuit. The charges were dismissed, but she’s nonetheless “haunted by this traumatic incident,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Devereaux is hardly the first person to have allegedly experienced brutality over such a low-level crime.

To be sure, fare evasion can be a costly problem for cities; BART loses an estimated $15 million to $25 million over the issue each year. But advocates charge that spending big on transit police doesn’t do all that much to solve the problem. (“MTA Will Spend $249M On New Cops to Save $200M on Fare Evasion,” was the headline of one Streetsblog New York post in 2019, in which the author lamented, “Guess this is why they don’t call it the Mathematics Transportation Authority.) Riders—particularly poor people and people of color—continue to be thrown in jail for turnstile-jumping, even though those detention facilities also ostensibly cost the government a hefty sum to run, and can cause irrevocable harm to people's lives. 

And police departments struggling to rehab their image are repeatedly put on the defensive, too, with video after video showing transit cops aggressively arresting and brutalizing people for failing to pay fares worth less than a cup of coffee. 

“She’s still shook up by it,” Pointer said. “She only recently watched the video in anticipation of us filing the lawsuit, and it’s retraumatized her. Frankly, she has survivor’s guilt. For her, she’s like, ‘Hey man, I was down there on the ground. I was thinking about everything—I’m thinking about Oscar Grant. I’m thinking about Sandra Bland. How is this going to play out?’” 

“I actually feel a little guilty that I’m alive,” Devereaux told KTVU, a Fox affiliate in Oakland, of the alleged assault, which was caught in part on bodycam video. “And others who have had police encounters have not been as fortunate as me.”

Alicia Trost, a spokeswoman for BART, said in a statement that the agency and its police department “take all use of force incidents seriously,” though BART couldn’t “comment on pending or anticipated litigation or personnel matters.” 

“Nothing is more critical than building trust with riders and the communities we serve through equitable policing practices,” Trost said. “BART’s general manager, chief of police, and independent police auditor are working hard to advance progressive policing reforms to ensure our policies, training, and de-escalation tactics exceed industry standards. We are constantly working to reduce use of force incidents through more holistic approaches to safety through training and community engagement.”