Transportation rules in Dayton, Ohio are setting people up for jail time
On January 16, Markcus Brown was on his way to a job interview when he was approached by a police officer at one of the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) hubs in Dayton, Ohio. Standing next to friends wearing baggy pants and sweatshirts, Brown was asked to show his identification. After declining the request, he was […]
On January 16, Markcus Brown was on his way to a job interview when he was approached by a police officer at one of the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) hubs in Dayton, Ohio. Standing next to friends wearing baggy pants and sweatshirts, Brown was asked to show his identification. After declining the request, he was issued a trespass warning that prevented him from returning to the transit center and riding RTA buses for two years. But Brown, who was 20 years old at the time, explained during a recent phone call that he didn’t know he was banned. His signature was also missing from the RTA form that people must sign when they’ve been issued a trespass warning and banned from the premises, according to documents obtained by the Fair Punishment Project.
Allegedly unaware of his status, the 20-year-old went back to the hub in May. Brown was again approached by an officer because “his pants were sagging,” according to an incident report. Once Brown’s name was run through the system, his status was flagged and he was arrested for trespassing.
Brown was locked up in Montgomery County’s jail, where he remained for nine days because he couldn’t pay bail set at $150 (and later increased to $200). With no other option, Brown waited for his mother to scrape together the funds. He told the Fair Punishment Project that during his incarceration, he didn’t get enough food or sleep, shivering in a shared cell each night. Eventually, Brown’s mother was forced to take out a loan to pay for her son’s release.
Not only is Brown’s story a common one, it showcases a wide range of criminal justice issues in Montgomery County: racial profiling by police officers, the perils of privatizing public services, the harsh economic realities of cash bail, and poor jail conditions.
Daniel Durocher, a Montgomery County public defender who represented Brown, says the RTA’s “Rules of the Road” often result in racial profiling that can then lead to an arrest. Although Dayton RTA is the city’s main public transportation system and says it wants to be “a premier public transportation provider that connects people and communities,” it is run by a private corporation that dictates how people should look (“hoodies must be removed upon boarding the bus”) and conduct themselves (“maintain personal hygiene so as not to offend fellow patrons”).
Dayton RTA hires officers from the city police department to patrol its property and enforce its policies. And while people aren’t arrested for violations like wearing baggy pants, swearing, littering, or waiting for the bus for too long (often classified as “loitering”), suspicion of breaking any one of RTA’s rules empowers police to approach them.
“[Officers] start asking questions,” Durocher said. “They use the RTA rules as a means to come into contact with somebody, and once they’re in contact with the person, they’re doing investigative work.” In some instances, police will ask to pat a person down; sometimes they will do so without permission. In effect, law enforcement can use the RTA rules as pretext for their own stop-and-frisk program.
Moreover, during the questioning by police, the wrong answer — or, as in Brown’s case, the unwillingness to answer — can easily set in motion a process that starts with a ban and quickly leads to an arrest for trespassing.
In another case, Durocher recalled, a man was arrested and hauled to jail because the police mistook him for his much younger son. Norman Ferguson, born in 1966, was at the RTA hub when police approached his friend. Ferguson asked the officers why they were talking to her, and the officers ran his name through RTA’s tracking system, Durocher said. Ferguson was flagged as someone who had previously received a trespass warning and been instructed by the company not to come back.
Ferguson remained in jail for 12 days. He ultimately met his court-appointed attorney on the day of his scheduled trial. His lawyer informed the prosecutor that Ferguson’s son, born in 1991, was the one with a trespass warning — not the jailed client.
According to RTA Chief Executive Mark Donaghy, people labeled “trespassers” aren’t detained for long. He also says criminal activity has declined since 2009, when the Rules of the Road were implemented. But according to Durocher, the Ferguson and Brown cases highlight a glaring problem in Montgomery County: trespassing and other types of misdemeanors are contributing to the jail’s overcrowding problem. Judges are setting cash bonds for these minor charges and people like Ferguson and Brown remain in jail because they can’t afford to pay.
“There are so many people being held in jail on nonviolent misdemeanor offenses at any given time,” says Durocher. “That’s a bad use of public resources.”
As a result, those who pose no threat to public safety are languishing in an overpopulated facility riddled with alleged abuses, including racial segregation and the excessive use of force by corrections officials. One video shows a restrained woman pepper-sprayed in the face. In May, a man who did time in 2015 filed a lawsuit that claims he was punched repeatedly and left with a bleeding scalp. He was the ninth person to sue the jail.
Brown was convicted for trespassing in June and sentenced to unsupervised probation. Despite his financial troubles, he was also forced to pay more than $150 in court fees. He’s indefinitely “trespassed,” unable to use public buses for the foreseeable future — a punishment that severely restricts his movement and access to job opportunities. But returning to the hub could mean another three weeks in jail. After taking out a loan and shelling out bail money, his mom is also struggling to get by.
“It really hurt me to know I can’t be able to pay her back without a job,” he told local reporters. “It’s hard.”