Local: BART’s new safety plan — uniformed, unarmed ‘ambassadors.’
Officers would help create a more visible presence, BART says
Anyone who rides BART late at night knows the experience isn’t always pleasant. After the packed evening commute gives way to more sparsely populated trains and platforms, the problems that often play out within the transit system — from crime and drug use to harassment by mentally ill people — can make for intimidating trips that lead some riders to avoid the system at night.
“Lonely, empty” was how rider Gordon Fuller described a recent late-night trip home to the East Bay from San Francisco. “A little intimidating.”
Now, after a year and a half of debate, BART leaders have settled on a plan to reassure riders with a staff of uniformed, unarmed “ambassadors” who would walk through trains in the afternoon and latenight hours, conducting highly visible patrols at a time when many passengers feel they are on their own.
“There is something about the lack of presence that makes people really uncomfortable” late at night, said BART Director Janice Li, one of the backers of the proposal. “If our presence is what’s going to make people feel more comfortable, let’s get the presence we need.”
A $690,000 pilot program to test the idea is set to go before the BART board of directors today, following a key change that has prompted its most vocal critics to drop their opposition.
If it’s approved, the ambassadors would start riding trains in February. And riders quickly would notice, BART Deputy General Manager Michael Jones said.
“It’s going to be additional presence in the system almost immedi
ately,” Jones said.
A team of 10 ambassadors, pulled from the ranks of the BART Police Department’s team of community service officers, would ride trains in pairs for 10 hours each day.
During the evening commute, from 2 to 7 p.m., the teams would patrol along the suburban stretches of two BART lines — some riding back and forth from Walnut Creek to Pittsburg/ Bay Point and others from Oakland’s Coliseum station to Union City.
Then, from 7 p.m. until the system winds down at midnight, the teams would switch to the core of the BART system in downtown San Francisco and Oakland, circulating between the Civic Center and 12th Street stations.
That would be a welcome change for Taylor Dear, a 22-year-old BART rider from Hayward.
On a recent nighttime trip, Dear said, she encountered a man who was carrying a knife. There was no police officer or any other official presence in sight; another rider had warned her, and she moved to another car.
Told about the ambassador proposal, Dear said, “If I had to ride late, it would make me feel a lot safer.”
The program is one of two proposals in a $1.5 million plan going before the board today to address quality-oflife complaints. The other is an $810,000 plan to build a new fare gate around the elevator at the Coliseum station, using a prototype of the new swinging fare gate design directors approved last year.
The agency hopes to one day use those gates throughout the system.
BART has seen its ridership decline amid rising crime and high-profile attacks in the system, including the fatal stabbing in November of Oliver Williams when he intervened to stop a theft aboard a train last fall, and the fatal stabbing of Nia Wilson on a BART station platform in July 2018. Wilson’s sister also
was stabbed in the attack and has recovered.
The new ambassadors would be there to respond to riders’ complaints, answer their questions and report hazards that need cleaning, such as blood, urine, feces and other bodily fluids on trains. They would receive BART police training in how to de-escalate confrontations and to recognize unconscious racial bias.
But unlike police officers, who might ticket or arrest someone if they witness a crime or a violation of BART’s rules, Jones said the ambassadors would not have that authority. They instead would be expected to call in the problem on their police radios, leaving any arrests or citations to BART police officers.
“Their role is not enforcement,” Jones said. “Their role is presence, and eyes and ears.”
The idea draws inspiration from the civilian attendants who staff BART elevators in downtown San Francisco, as well as a Muni ambassador program that staffs buses after school lets out; it also has echoes of the street ambassadors
in uptown and downtown Oakland, as well as safety escorts who walked BART riders to their cars at some stations in the past.
Longtime supporters of the concept — a slate of directors who fall on the more progressive side of a board often divided over
public safety issues — have walked a fine line, calling for changes to protect riders’ safety while being hesitant to rely on traditional police officers and law enforcement.
Rider MK Veniegas-Isip, a 26-year-old artist and activist, said a bigger law enforcement presence on BART would not make her feel safer. Veniegas-Isip said she was concerned that by contacting police, the ambassadors could wind up needlessly escalating encounters with people who need mental health care or other social services.
“How do I know that these people are not going to get targeted?” she said.
Earlier proposals from Li and other backers would have contracted with community-based organizations, not the police department, to staff the ambassadors program.
But the idea of bringing on ambassadors from community organizations was a nonstarter for the union representing BART police officers. Revising the proposal to use community service officers, who receive BART police background checks and perform jobs such as parking enforcement, won over Keith Garcia, the president of BART Police Officers Association. BART in turn will make new hires to backfill the 10 community service officer positions assigned to be ambassadors.
“That is something we can get behind,” Garcia said. “These will be people that we have vetted, that we have trained.”
Director Debora Allen, who derided the previous iteration of the ambassadors proposal as a “toothless” waste of resources, also said she would support the program following the change — though she remained skeptical that it would do much to make BART safer.
“We have to put a police presence on the trains, and that’s what we are doing,” Allen said.