Senate Bill 210
DUPLICATING OFFENSES AGAINST TRANSIT WORKERS (BERNARD GRIBBIN’S LAW)
Senate Bill 210 Bill Information
Description: SB 210 would create a criminal offense for actions that deliberately disrupt or threaten public transit operators while they are performing their duties. The bill outlines five specific scenarios that constitute interference, ranging from attempting to cause serious bodily injury or death to an operator, causing bodily injury, interfering with an operator in a way that results in harm to others, or using physical menace to threaten an operator. Penalties vary depending on the severity of the offense, with actions resulting in serious bodily injury or death classified as a first-degree felony, and less severe actions classified as third-degree felonies.
PA Justice Alliance Member Positions & Feedback
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SB 210 would amend the Vehicle Code (Title 75) to create a new criminal offense—with five suboffenses—to punish harm or attempted harm to public transit operators. All of the conduct criminalized under this new section is currently covered under numerous offenses in the Crimes Code (Title 18).
Each of these offenses are already criminalized under current law and as such, are duplicative and unnecessary. Creating duplicative offenses is the primary driver of the statehouse-to-prison pipeline. Punishing the same behavior already criminalized under current law corrupts the integrity of PA’s criminal law and allows prosecutors to stack multiple charges for the same action, resulting in overly punitive prison terms.
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