Now we are going to do it on a 24-hour basis starting Sunday. This is good for us, the bus drivers, 3,000 of us. But what about the 800,000 people who work and live here in Washington, who ride the bus some time or other, it is going to cause a whole lot of inconvenience to these people when they give a dollar to the bus driver, he cannot give them anything in change but scrip. If a person happens to live over in Glover Park or McLean Gardens, he has to come down Sunday or Saturday way up to the other side of town to get his change, which is about 80 cents, 73 cents really.

Now, he will probably say, "Forget it." So all that money stays in D.C. Transit, making this man a little bigger, and making the man who is just working for a living, just trying to make ends meet, he is going to lose that money because he has to go to the other side of town to get that money, and it is going to be a whole lot of inconvenience to him, and I say this without wondering as to the effect that some of these, some of us, are going to be hurt when we tell these people we do not have any change to give them, we do not have any change at all, after we give them this scrip, explaining there is no doubt in my mind that some of us are going to be hurt.

Now, it has gotten to the point that you can be driving a bus, say, up F Street, for instance, in the afternoon, when the rush hour is going on, and you can be going along, and you can come to a bus stop and you can see the pickpockets standing there waiting to get on the bus because it is crowded.

I am not a policeman, none of these men who work with me are policemen, but they can pick out a pickpocket just as readily as I can, and just as soon as a person gets on a bus, you are not a policeman, you cannot stop this guy. All you can do is holler, like I do, all these times, "Ladies, watch your pocketbooks. Pickpockets are on the bus."

We see them, actually see them, but we cannot stop them. It has actually gotten that bad.

We have had guys robbed-today or tomorrow the guy will come back on the bus and give him his wallet back, come face to face with the guy who did the robbing, and give his wallet back, for the simple reason he knows nothing is going to happen to him. It is tax-free money-why not rob?

Mr. MACHEN. Tell us some details. Did you make a movie of one of those?

Mr. RICHMOND. Yes, I made a movie, Congressman Machen. In fact, you called my bluff. I told you I could make a movie of what goes on every day around the buses. I took this movie, and the movie came out real good. The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority saw the movie, and they said that this is good. They said, "We are going to have to have this," and they took the movie, they took the film, and they sent it to New York and that is where it is now.

I planned on bringing this film down here and actually showing it to you. Actually, it is what goes on or the people climbing in the back windows of buses or scaring people off the buses, operators being chased off buses. I mean this can happen any day, any time of year. I can take my camera and go out and take you pictures of things that you would not believe.

I am not a good speaker, but I believe in showing you exactly what is going on, and that is what I planned to do today, but the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority has the film now.

Now, insofar as like the policemen work six days a week, we work six days a week, also. We are about 140 men short. That is 140 buses. They carry 51 people. Nobody wants the job.

The guys who once worked at it or retired are quitting with 13 and 14 years seniority. They cannot afford to stay on the job for fear of their lives or losing a limb or going blind, and so forth.

Now, it has got to the point where some of the fellows are actually carrying guns. I do not carry a gun. I would not want to shoot nobody, yet still I do not know-I do not want nobody to shoot me. What I did do one time, I would always carry myself a R-C cola bottle. If anybody was attacking me I was going to try to wear that coke bottle out on him. And what I could tell the law was that I found this coke bottle rolling around on the floor, and they could not get me for concealed weapon. Why should I have to go around like this? It is not necessary.

Half the drivers at one time at night were carrying guns, scared to death. We had one man who was jumped on out in Northeast, beaten on the ground, and beaten, he begged the people to leave him alone. He pulled his gun out and shot one of them to keep them from killing him.

They fired him because he saved his life. They had to take him to the hospital, and before he was fired he had to stay in the hospital I do not know for how long, and when he came back they dismissed him because he had this gun, but he saved his life.

Mr. DOWDY. They ought to have given him a medal.
Mr. RICHMOND. I say more power to a man like this.

But what we are trying to say simply, anything that goes on in the District of Columbia we are part of it. I do not care what it is, civil disturbance, civil disobedience, riots, anything, we have to be a part of it because it is our job.

If you need extra policemen to go out in these areas, we are the ones who have the buses to take these people there. We take them there. Anything that happens, happy times, sad times, sorrow, we are there. This is out type job and we do it.

But we do not see why we should have to work and take so much harassment and so much beating and even danger to our lives as well as people who ride the bus also.

So we are just simply asking that something be done. We do not have a solution, but the main thing that we are actually asking for is prosecution.

We have men who have been robbed. They get on the bus every day, like I say, these guys, maybe I work a line today and I work a different line tomorrow, all right. I might see the guy who robbed me. Well, I cannot do anything. I mean, if I catch the guy and hold him, and I am going, supposed to go to court, the next day, somebody from my company will tell me he will make me believe that I will be in grave danger if I go down and prosecute him. This may sound very

untrue.

Mr. Dowdy. Your employer won't permit you to prosecute?

Mr. RICHMOND. I am not saying he won't permit you, but I will say he will inflict fear in your heart that he will do something if you go down and prosecute the man who has robbed you.

I caught a man one time coming out of the garage with our trap box-we carry money in our boxes-I ran down the street and caught this man, brought him back to the garage and called the police. They came to find out he had two trap boxes. He had hid one outside and was coming back for another one. All right.

The police came, they took him down. I went home. I got off that night, my car was torn up. This guy had been released before I got off duty, and I was turning in then. It was just the simple fact that they make us believe that they will fire us, which they can't, they will make the guys believe they will fire them if they go down and go down to the courts and appear and be a witness and say, "Yes, this is the guy who robbed me.

Mr. Dowdy. It seems to me that is inviting more trouble. Prosecutions and punishment will deter criminals. Remove that fear, and the problem becomes worse.

Mr. RICHMOND. I say, Mr. Chairman, it is not inviting, it is breeding crime.

Mr. Dowdy. Well, that is true.

I was a prosecutor for eight years before I came to Congress, and every once in a while there would be some complaining witness who would be afraid to testify or would not want to prosecute because of the fear of the consequences; I was always able to persuade them of the error of their ways, that the only way you can stop crime is to have prosecutions and give criminals adequate punishment for what they have done, punish them the amount that they deserve.

I just cannot conceive, it is really unbelievable or almost unbelierable, that an employer or company would refuse to prosecute, and certainly they should encourage an employee to testify against anyone who was depredating on the company's business or property.

Mr. RICHMOND. This is unheard of. I think what the company is afraid of, Mr. Chairman, is the fact that so many times people here tend to jump on D.C. Transit about anything that they do, and they are afraid to have a write-up in the paper, "D.C. Transit gives a 16year-old boy or 18-year-old kid or 19-year-old kid," which they really are, big as I am, 19-year-old kid, "three years for assaulting a driver." They have to have this written up in the paper.

Mr. Dowdy. It is a ridiculous situation, calling an 18, 19, 20-year-old thug a child because they are not children.

Mr. RICHMOND. Yes.

Mr. Dowdy. All the papers are guilty of that, and it is pretty bad. Mr. MACHEN. Mr. Chairman, I might add that these are the key spokesmen. They are representing a representative group of 40 or 50 of them I met with right here in this room, and one of the reasons why I requested you all to permit, to have additional hearings, is what this gentleman has just stated and the impression I got from all the bus drivers, that the company has a policy of frowning on their participation in attempting to arrest these people or attempting to have anything done to them, if they cause trouble on the buses.

If they do it they have to go to court, they do it on their own time. I mean it is not on company time, even though it is company property that is involved, and it was just startling to me this permissive attitude on the other side of the fence, so to speak.

Mr. RICHMOND. Just to give you an idea, this is one of the things that goes on at D.C. Transit.

Last year, all of 1967-1967 now- -we had a million and a half worth of buses and glass or seats and glass destroyed, a million and a half dollars, and robberies, too.

Now, this year it is going to be much higher than that. In the event. that some safety director from the District was to come down and go over the buses of D.C. Transit, and enforce the law like they really are supposed to be enforced insofar as like a cab or a public transportation vehicle cannot operate with a broken glass or cracked glass, you would stop half the transportation in the Washington, D.C., area, because nearly every one of our buses has some type of cracked window, and he just cannot replace them fast enough.

Mr. BROYHILL. You say a million and a half dollars?

Mr. RICHMOND. A million and a half. That was last year, 1967.
Mr. BROYHILL. A million and a half!

Mr. RICHMOND. A million and a half dollars in seats and glass. This is just last year. This year it is going to be much higher than this because of the civil disturbance.

Mr. BROYHILL. Actually, Mr. Chairman, the mere fact that we have a provision in the law for the waiver of the motor vehicle fuel tax and other taxes for D.C. Transit if the revenue or the income is not at a certain level, means this has to be paid for by the taxpayers.

Mr. RICHMOND. I do not know anything about that, but I am just saying a million and a half.

Mr. BROYHILL. Yes.

Mr. RICHMOND. It is quite a bit of money, and this year I imagine it will go to $2 million, and you take these fellows, this guy has been robbed five times.

Mr. BROYHILL. Do you gentlemen represent the union itself, or are you just individuals?

Mr. RICHMOND. No, we are just individuals of the union. What Mr. Machen is speaking of, he invited us down prior to this meeting and we were talking to him, and we were telling him some of the things that were going on, and he really could not believe some of the things we were saying. I told him that I would bring this film, and he called my bluff and he said, "You do it."

Mr. MACHEN. I did not say I did not believe it. I wanted to make certain it would go in the official records.

Mr. RICHMOND. He said for me to bring in the evidence.
Mr. BROYHILL. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Mr. RICHMOND. It is, it really is.

Mr. BROYHILL. Did I understand correctly that you were criticizing the scrip system, when you were talking about the inconvenience of it? Mr. RICHMOND. It is not an inconvenience to me or the drivers, it is not an inconvenience at all to us. In fact, we welcome it, we grab our transfers and the scrip in the morning and we are off.

The first week or so is going to be kind of rough on us because a lot of people do not understand.

Mr. BROYHILL. Do you support it?

Mr. RICHMOND. Oh, yes, right now, because it keeps us from being robbed. We had one robbery Monday. This happened during the day. A guy was walking down the street and some guys walked up behind

him and said, "Keep walking," and they walked up an apartment eight floors and robbed him.

Mr. BROYHILL. I thought the drivers had insisted upon it, and that the company had resisted up until recently.

Mr. RICHMOND. Yes, they had resisted it.

Mr. BROYHILL. Of course, you are experienced in this. You mentioned the case of a person who would go far to get his change.

Mr. PHILLIPS. The only problem with the scrip is like I find out, I work in one of the worst ghetto areas, I think, in Washington, D.C., and that is Benning Road from H Street on out of town.

Now, here is a man on Friday night, he just got paid. This guy has got a $5 bill, and he is half high, he climbs up on the bus and he asks to change it, he asks change or tokens. I say, "I am sorry, I cannot make change." He says, "I am not getting off the bus and I want to ride it." I am not a policeman and I cannot put him off. After 8:00 o'clock you explain that we issue scrip, and you explain how scrip works. This guy is not buying. This guy is not giving up $5.

Mr. BROYHILL. You are kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't! If you don't have the change you are going to get slugged, and if you do have it you are going to be robbed.

You have to use the trial and error method as to what might be a more streamlined or more effective way of doing this. But the idea of requiring passengers to have the exact change, might work once people got used to it. I would think you could make it effective except for those instances where a thug gets on and want to get the free ride.

Mr. PHILLIPS. You see, that is all I haul.

Mr. BROYHILL. But it requires, you know-

Mr. DOWDY. He says he does not have any other kind of riders. Mr. BROYHILL. You have to have the change for the telephone or for cigarette slot machines.

Mr. RICHMOND. It will work out once it got started.

Mr. PHILLIPS. The only trouble is the type of people I haul you cannot talk to them.

Mr. MACHEN. Let me ask Mr. Phillips, even before you had the scrip system you had this thing of people saying, "We are going to ride, period."

Mr. PHILLIPS. Right.

Mr. MACHEN. When that did occur would you try to stop them, tell the police about that or if not, why not? I want to pinpoint it because this is part of what he said.

Mr. RICHMOND. Here is one thing, it comes back to the company again. The company wants no trouble. They want no trouble what

soever.

Now, you are to have nobody locked up under any circumstances. This is the first law. You are to have no one locked up under any circumstances, child, woman, old man, nobody is to be locked up. We have fellows, like when, who was here just before usMr. DowDY. The Government Printing Office.

Mr. RICHMOND. The Government Printing Office, when these fellows take these women and escort them to the buses, they leave them, and then we are in charge or they think we are in charge, those women who are hovering around us like we are the law.