A 14-year-old boy was left stranded at the Rockland Ferry Terminal after a Concord Coach Lines bus driver refused to seat him for lack of identification. (Daniel Dunkle/Courier Gazette)
ROCKLAND — Concord Coach Lines backed its bus driver after a front-page column in the Boston Globe raised concerns about possible racism when a 14-year-old boy was not allowed to board the bus in Rockland .
The boy in question is Ahmed, 14, of Brookline, Mass. We are not using his last name due to his age. Ahmed is an American citizen born in Michigan, and his mother is an immigrant from Pakistan.
He was visiting a friend for a summer vacation in Maine and had a ticket home on a Concord bus out of Rockland.
Ahmed said in a phone interview that he had the receipt for the ticket on his cell phone and he was going to board the bus with his friend’s grandmother.
As he was waiting to get on the bus, a couple in front of him was pulled to the side and asked to show identification. Later the bus driver told him he would not travel on the bus “period” unless he had identification. When the friend’s grandmother tried to ask about the incident, the bus driver told her to get back on the bus, Ahmed said.
Ahmed said the driver for the most part ignored him and when he did notice him was very cold in his tone and seemed irritated.
He said that being 14, he does not have any identification.
The other couple was allowed on the bus and Ahmed went inside to try to talk to someone at the ticket counter, hoping to clear up the misunderstanding. The people at the window simply said they did not make policy.
While he was inside, the bus left without him, leaving him stranded. He had to call around to people in his friend’s family for a ride, and though he was supposed to be home by 3 p.m. ended up not making it home until 10 p.m. having been given a ride with friends.
“I never wanted to scream racism until I realized how unfair it was,” he said.
He added he has never been confronted by racism before, and that there is no way to know for sure that it was motivated by racism.
Steve Harbert, safety director for Concord Coach Lines, said the company does not feel the bus driver, who he refused to identify, did anything wrong.
“There was no profiling,” he said. He said he has driven a bus before and “when you look out at the people, you just see them as a crowd.” He said the drivers do not see the people in terms of the color of their skin.
Boston Globe columnist Nestor Ramos broke the story online Aug. 22 under the headline: “‘I was the only one left behind. And I was the only one who was brown.’”
Concord Coach Lines argues that drivers ask passengers for identification “as collateral” in places including Rockland where they cannot have their tickets printed. Why they cannot print tickets in Rockland is unclear.
“When the passenger in question informed the driver that he didn’t have a printed ticket or an ID, the driver boarded the rest of the bus first, and then was told the passenger had already left the boarding area when he tried to find him again to determine a solution,” the company’s emailed statement said.
“During peak travel time in the summer, it can be difficult for drivers at these rural locations, such as Rockland, ME, to board dozens of people at a time, sort and load their luggage, take their tickets, answer their questions, handle issues, and then leave on time. In the process of trying to accommodate so many people, drivers can find themselves overloaded,” the statement continues. “When this happens, drivers tend to have less time to come up with a creative solution to getting everyone on the bus.”
Ahmed said, however, that it was not the hectic scene described. He said no one would listen to him or explain the situation to him. No one from the bus company has contacted him since the incident, he said.
Concord Coach Lines told the Portland Press Herald in June it was a “mistake” for an employee to falsely tell passengers in Bangor they needed to be U.S. citizens to ride the company’s buses. Asked if there was an issue with the company’s culture, Harbert said that incident was totally unrelated.
Concord Coach Lines is headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire.
Daniel Dunkle can be reached at ddunkle@villagesoup.com.
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