Needle kiosk for S.F. BART station
Officials, police step up efforts at Civic Center
BART’s Civic Center/U.N. Plaza Station has become the first in the transit agency’s system with a kiosk for dirty drug needles, part of a deal with San Francisco to increase police patrols and take other measures to clean up areas in and around the heavily used station.
San Francisco officials agreed to install needle kiosks at station entrances and sharply increase police presence to try to cut down on drug activity and the hazardous debris that users leave behind. BART also will add more officers to the station and will start working with city agencies that try to get homeless people off the streets.
City leaders and officials with the transit agency are expected to roll out the plan Wednesday for the station, which also houses a major Muni Metro stop. Officials came up with the measures after KPIX-TV aired footage in April of people in the station openly injecting drugs or slumped against the wall, apparently unconscious.
“The video was horrific, but those of us who use BART frequently, either in San Francisco or throughout the Bay Area, have experienced these same conditions for years,” said Mayor Mark Farrell, who convened discussions between the city and BART after seeing the footage. “It was a great catalyst to bring our Police Department and BART together to come up with a solution that will dramatically affect the experience of BART riders.”
Civic Center generates more calls for police service than any other BART station, said transit agency Police Chief Carlos Rojas. Besides the added police presence, the city and BART have agreed to work together on dealing with issues of homelessness, drug addiction
and behavioral health issues around Civic Center and other San Francisco stations — urban problems that the transit agency is ill-equipped to handle on its own.
“BART is not a social services agency. It’s not a public health agency,” said Nick Josefowitz, one of San Francisco’s three BART directors. “We’re only going to be successful if we’re partnering deeply with the communities we’re serving who have those resources at their disposal.”
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the size of the Civic Center station has made it an attractive destination for drug dealers and buyers. SPFD increased foot patrols around the stations’ entrances in August to try to curb drug activity there, he said.
“There are a lot of off-the-beaten-path types of places where people would congregate” to use drugs, Scott said. “That’s where the collaboration with BART PD and the visible police presence will really make a difference.”
People injecting drugs at and around the station often leave their dirty needles behind. The city installed a needle kiosk this month at the station entrance near U.N. Plaza and may install two more, depending on the need.
In between cleanings, needles can accumulate just about anywhere in the station, said BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost.
“We find them everywhere — in the trash, on the ground, everywhere,” she said.
San Francisco has installed needle kiosks across the city where drug users congregate, including several in Civic Center. The city and organizations it partners with collect around 275,000 used syringes each month.
Beginning next month, San Francisco police will add 290 officer hours each week to the Civic Center station, a nearly fivefold increase from existing levels. BART will expand its patrol staffing by 30 percent, or 78 hours a week. BART and the city will split the costs of the added staffing hours down the middle.
The pact also clarifies whose officers will patrol where — BART will police areas inside its fare gates, and SFPD officers will cover areas behind Muni’s turnstiles. Officers from both agencies will patrol common areas.
And in an effort to fold BART into the city’s broader efforts to address quality-oflife-problems, the transit agency will be integrated into the city’s Healthy Streets Operations Center. The network of city departments, including the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Department of Public Health, handles nonemergency homelessness complaints and street behavioral issues.
Connecting BART police officers with the operations center will give the transit agency a direct line to the city’s homeless and drug-treatment services.
“Our stations are a reflection of the community outside our stations,” Rojas said. “We’re dealing with the same folks. If someone is shooting up, there are times when they’re streetside and other times when they’re coming down to BART. Solidifying the communication between (BART and the city) and giving us access to their resources like the public health folks — that’s huge.”