BART hires new police chief from Santa Ana, sources say

BART has hired a new police chief — Carlos Rojas, who resigned as chief in the Orange County city of Santa Ana, multiple sources told The Chronicle on Thursday.

BART officials are expected to announce Rojas’ hiring Friday.

Rojas, who has been Santa Ana’s police chief for nearly three years, spent 27 years with the department. He’ll take over from Kenton Rainey, who retired Dec. 31 after seven years as BART police chief.

During Rainey’s tenure, the chief reformed the department and helped it recover from the fatal Jan. 1, 2009, Oscar Grant shooting by a BART police officer at Fruitvale Station. The shooting, which attracted national attention and became the subject of a movie, roiled the department and the transit system in controversy.

Rojas worked his way up from patrol officer to police chief in Santa Ana, serving as corporal, sergeant, commander and deputy chief, according to the city’s website. He also created a homeland security division of the department after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

According to the Orange County Register, Santa Ana experienced a surge in shootings, many of them gang related, across the city from 2013 to 2016. The shootings, and Rojas, became an issue in last year’s City Council campaigns, and there were rumors that some wanted to fire the chief.

The Santa Ana Police Officers Association, which had been critical of Rojas, had scheduled a no-confidence vote.

At BART, Rojas will be in charge of a smaller department. In Santa Ana, Rojas oversaw more than 300 sworn officers. BART has 227 sworn officers. But BART police cover a transit system that extends into four counties and has 46 stations and more than 100 miles of track. It carries about 433,000 people on an average weekday.

While the department may have recovered from the Grant shooting and has a low violent crime rate, it faces other challenges, including a growing number of homeless people who sleep on trains, panhandle in stations and use elevators and escalators as restrooms, and an increase in riders who fail to pay their fares.