More officers at troubled stations is BART’S latest plan to tackle crime
OAKLAND » The BART Police Department wants to further ramp up its presence on trains and in stations by assigning beat officers to specific high-crime stops as the transit system works to reassure riders who have fled amid worries about their safety.
BART Police Chief Ed Alvarez said his department’s efforts to hire more officers and launch regular train patrols have been paying off, pointing to an 18% drop in crime in January compared with the first month of 2019.
Still, crime in the BART system rose for a sixth straight year in 2019, with violent crimes up 4% and all crimes up 11% compared with 2018.
And another violent attack on Feb. 11 in the system, in which a man beat another passenger with a chain in an apparently unprovoked assault aboard a rush-hour train in Oakland, grabbed headlines and rattled nerves for riders nervous about crime. That attack remains under investigation, with no suspect in custody.
“We need to listen to our riders and own their concern,” Alvarez told BART’S board during a presentation at its annual retreaton Feb. 13, where members debated how to stem declining ridership and how a public transit agency primarily tasked with taking passengers around the Bay Area ought to handle a regional homelessness crisis that often plays out on its trains and platforms.
“Our riders are telling us that they are frustrated and don’t feel safe in our system,” Alvarez added.
Transit ridership has been down across the country and throughout the Bay Area. But BART officials have been particularly concerned about data showing steep declines in night and weekend ridership, when many passengers complain that they feel unsafe once rush-hour crowds die down, or infrequent service makes taking transit less attractive. That’s a big problem for BART because the agency relies on passengers’ fare revenue for roughly half of its operating budget.
BART’S board has at times been conflicted about how to confront rising crime, with some directors wary of a heavy-handed response to problems such as homelessness that they worry could amount to criminalizing poverty.
On top of the historically fraught relationships between communities of color and law enforcement generally, the agency’s police have faced criticism for the large racial disparities in the department’s arrests and citations and have spent more than a decade seeking to regain community trust following the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant by a BART officer.
“All communities want safety, and they want law enforcement,” BART board President Lateefah Simon said Feb. 13. “They don’t want law enforcement that is not fair.”
Despite those reservations, BART’S directors so far have signed off on many of the police department’s new initiatives and its efforts to hire more officers.
Alvarez said he planned to request funding in BART’S budget for an additional 19 police officers, in addition to the 19-officer increase the board approved last year.
This year, BART police have assigned 22 employees to new positions patrolling trains and stations on nights and weekends. A dozen traditional police officers were assigned to train teams in January, and 10 unarmed ambassadors from among the department’s community service officers began a six-month pilot program patrolling trains on Feb. 10.
The department’s latest initiative is a push to assign a handful officers to patrol single stations, rather than having them bounce between several stops, as they typically are assigned to do. By keeping those officers in one place, Alvarez said, they can build relationships with station agents and regular riders, while being close by in an emergency.
Director Liz Ames welcomed the idea, saying it recalls “the days of having a beat cop.”
Which stations will have an assigned officer isn’t clear yet.