Disabled man says T agents made him feel ‘humiliated’
‘It was a lot of nonsense’
A blind, homeless man said he was “humiliated” by two since-fired MBTA customer service agents, who police say pushed the 58-year-old and tossed his walking stick away after he tried to enter a fare gate without a pass.
Jerry Tolbert said the two privately contracted “ambassadors” manning the Chinatown T station on Thursday morning told him he “shouldn’t be in here” when he tried walking to the platform. The two then blocked his path to the gates, according to T officials and a video of the incident. And at another point, one of the agents shoved him, causing Tolbert to drop his cane.
The agent, who worked for the company Block By Block, then picked it up and threw it away, prompting Tolbert to search for it in vain for several moments until a Transit officer grabbed it for him and helped him through the fare gate.
“It was a lot of humiliation, a lot of disrespect. It shouldn’t have came to that at all,” Tolbert said outside the St. Francis House, a downtown homeless shelter where he stays. He said he has a T pass, but had misplaced it when he got to the station.
“It was a lot of nonsense going on,” he said. “It was a lot of false accusations, like, ‘You’re not going through here. You shouldn’t be in here.’ ... I was trying to convince them: I wasn’t just trying to hang around (the station). I was trying to go to my destination.”
T officials said the two ambassadors were fired within hours of the latemorning incident, and the company apologized in a statement.
Block By Block, which won a $4.1 million annual contract to staff T stations with customer service agents, only began putting its employees at the Chinatown and Massachusetts Avenue stations on Aug. 2, replacing jobs once held by union staffers.
Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589, which has criticized the T’s moves to privatize several parts of the agency under Gov. Charlie Baker, yesterday sought to elevate the incident as one of the “risks related to privatization of the MBTA.”
“This is an example of what can happen when a private company is entrusted with the responsibility of providing a public service,” James O’Brien, Local 589’s president, said in a statement.
The T pushed back, citing what it called other “successful transitions” of its cash handling and warehouse operations to private firms. “In the Chinatown Station matter, the company took swift and decisive action against employees who did not follow the training they had received,” spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.
Tolbert said he is “more or less aggravated” by the events. He said he has been regularly staying at St. Francis House for 2 1⁄ years.
2 He acknowledged he has a criminal record, including a federal conviction for sending hoax anthrax letters to government officials 15 years ago.
“It was a misunderstanding,” he said of Thursday’s incident. “That’s what it was. ... I’ve got other issues, being homeless, being on the streets, being blind. I’m facing some obstacles.”