BART proposes $28 million safety plan
Measures would include behavioral recognition technology, call boxes on platforms, camera upgrades
OAKLAND >> Responding to a spate of lethal attacks on BART, including the stabbing death of 18-year-old Nia Wilson last month, BART on Monday announced a $28 million plan to curb violence on the system.
The proposal — which could take years to fully implement — includes immediate but temporary 60-hour work weeks for all police personnel, behavioral recognition technology in BART’s surveillance system, a ban on panhandling within the paid areas of stations and a crackdown on fare evasion. Already, some privacy and homeless advocates are questioning whether the plan unduly erodes passengers’ civil liberties.
BART’s governing board is expected to vote on the plan Thursday.
It comes just days after Friday’s slashing attack on two people at the MacArthur station in Oakland, the same station where John Lee Cowell, 27, allegedly attacked Wilson with a knife and wounded her sister on July 22. Wilson’s death was the third on the system within a week.
Since Wilson’s death, BART has been conducting a “top-to-bottom” review of security, staff said. It’s facing at least five lawsuits plus the threat of a sixth over safety lapses in its system. It’s clear the agency needs to “do even more” to keep riders safe, BART General Manager Grace Crunican said in
a statement.
“The tragic murder of Nia Wilson has deeply saddened everyone at BART, as well as the communities we serve,” she said. “Our riders are demanding that we need do more to maintain public safety, and this plan offers multiple new initiatives we can immediately begin to roll out.”
Beginning Monday, BART police, dispatchers and community service officers — who are part of the police department but are not sworn officers — began working 10-hour days, six days a week with all days off suspended. Patrol officers working on their regular days off are required to ride trains on those days throughout their shift. During regular shifts, officers are only required
to ride trains at least four times.
The 60-hour work week “is not sustainable,” said BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost in a telephone interview Monday. The emergency measure will be in place for three weeks before the police department re-evaluates it, she said.
To help with added visibility following high-profile crimes or if there are heightened security concerns, BART will consider calling upon Transportation Security Administration-trained employees to provide more “eyes and ears” throughout the system, Trost said. They already use these teams, who wear “high-visibility vests,” on New Year’s Eve and during big parades when there are a lot of riders on the system, she said.
BART also will crack down on panhandling. The safety plan calls for
banning panhandling in all the paid areas of the station. But Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness, worries the language in BART’s new proposed policy infringes on free speech, which protects asking for alms. Nor is there any evidence people who ask for money, sell newspapers or perform at stations are inherently dangerous.
“Panhandling has nothing to do with personal safety,” she said. “That is a class-based generalization that is somehow linking someone’s poverty status to whether there is a public safety issue.”
Also concerning is BART’s quiet rollout of a surveillance system at Lake Merritt that uses fixed sensors and physical alarms to monitor activity at stations and on platforms, said Brian Hofer, chairman
of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission, who is part of a working group helping BART draft a surveillance use policy.
The technology extends “video analytics” technology to some 2,000 existing cameras in BART’s systems to monitor the flow of foot traffic at stations and on platforms and sends an alert to dispatchers if it detects unusual patterns, according to Trost and a report to BART’s board. BART’s plan calls for replacing and upgrading another 1,500 cameras in stations, parking lots and garages at a cost of around $15 million over the next four years. Those cameras could also use the new behavior recognition software.
The software doesn’t have facial recognition capabilities, Trost said. But the lack of other details is troubling, Hofer said. At a cost of around $4 million
to implement the technology systemwide, and an annual operating cost of $1.3 million, that technology needs to be vetted to make sure it actually works and the district needs to be transparent about what it can do, he said.
“It’s a conversation we’re just not having,” Hofer said. “(This technology) doesn’t prevent these types of violent acts. We’re trying to use the wrong tool for this problem, and we’re not really even describing the tool that’s being used.”
Other measures in BART’s safety plan include:
• Accelerating efforts to crack down on fare evasion that already are underway, including making physical changes to stations to make it harder to jump over fare gates or installing additional fencing.
• Hiring an additional eight fare inspectors to staff an evening shift from 3 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.
• Installing real-time video surveillance screens at stations to remind patrons they are being recorded on video.
• Installing emergency call boxes on station platforms that would connect directly to BART’s police dispatch.
A systemwide roll out would take approximately two years and cost $5.2 million.
BART also is hiring more police officers. It has hired 18 new officers within the past 18 months but still has 25 vacancies it is seeking to fill, BART police Deputy Chief Ed Alvarez said in an interview last month. On any given day, there are 23 to 30 officers patrolling 122 miles of tracks and 48 stations, Trost said. It’s also seeking to hire another 19 community service officers, she said.