Bay Area Rapid Transportation’s crime transparency

BART officials’ arrogance continues to amaze. In recent years, they’ve tried to hide the true cost of labor contracts, and how money from a property tax increase would be spent. This year, they buried information about transit system crimes.

And then they tried to blame the media, which, according to a disturbing memo from Assistant General Manager Kerry Hamill, is only out for its own self-interest. It’s the sort of press-bashing we’d expect from the Trump administration, not a transit district dominated by politically progressive directors.

To make matters worse, Hamill claims that releasing information about crimes only serves to stir up racial prejudices. While we share a concern about deplorable latent bigotry that too often surfaces, that’s not justification for shutting down the flow of information about crime on BART.

It seems BART managers’ real agenda is to control information, to put a positive spin on a very troubled rail system and downplay rising crime on trains and in stations. The transit district’s penchant for secrecy must end.

Public concern was understandably heightened in April when as many as 60 youths jumped the fare gates at the Coliseum station, then robbed seven people and beat two others on a Dublin-bound train.

Then, in June at the same station, a teenager in a group of about a dozen youths snatched a woman’s phone and ran off the train. A Good Samaritan suffered minor injuries retrieving the phone and police quickly detained the group.

This month, a man was kicked several times and robbed at UC Berkeley after teenagers followed him from the downtown BART station.

In all three cases, BART officials never issued press releases about the incidents. They claimed they weren’t serious enough.

Meanwhile, the district’s new police chief, Carlos Rojas, eliminated the crime recaps distributed to the press and public. Instead, the district switched to using a clunky crime-mapping web site that locates incidents but provides no detail about what occurred.

To his credit, after hearing public, media and board protests, he backtracked and just started releasing the crime recaps again. But not before Hamill gave us a sense of how top BART administrators are thinking.

In her memo to the board about the second incident, she claimed there would have been “no benefit to riders, criminal procedure, BART police investigations, or the District generally” in issuing a press release.

Doing so, she said, “would paint an inaccurate picture of the BART system as crime-ridden when incidents of crime . are fewer than in surrounding communities.”

That’s a false comparison, and misses the point. The three incidents raise legitimate concerns and fears. Riders deserve to know so they can take appropriate precautions — and make educated decisions about if, where and when they want to ride BART.

BART shouldn’t try to make that decision for them.