The Bay Citzen’s Zusha Elinson has gotten hold of an email from BART spokesman Linton Johnson to 
BART deputy police chief Benson Fairow in the wee hours of Aug. 11 suggesting that cell phone service be cut to foil a protest. And the fateful reply Johnson got back from Fairow reads like the punch line of a bad joke:
“I like this idea. Can anyone think of a downside?”
Noted: It all happened in quite a hurry, the record shows. Not at all the way Johnson later portrayed it at an Aug. 16 press conference: “We struggled with that decision. That was a gut-wrenching decision. This agency takes free speech seriously."
