In 1969, three years before BART opened for revenue service, the transit district's board of directors recommended that local police and sheriff's departments patrol the stations, trains, rights-of-way, and other BART-owned properties that were within their respective jurisdictions. The police chiefs and sheriffs, forecasting that BART's proposal would create jurisdictional disputes and inconsistent levels of police service, rejected the board's proposal. As a result, legislation was passed to form an autonomous law enforcement agency, the BART Police Department. During BART's first 13 years of revenue service, police officers reported to the transit district's headquarters in Oakland. In 1985, a team of officers was assigned to report to the Concord transportation facility, where a police field office was established. By not having to travel the 20 miles between Oakland and Concord, the officers were able to patrol their beats longer and become more familiar with the community. BART riders, station agents, and train operators benefited from having more police presence and interaction with the same officers. This led to three additional field offices within six months. In July 1993, then-police chief Harold Taylor recommended a comprehensive plan to decentralize the department into four geographical police zones, each with its own headquarters and field offices. Zone commanders would be given personnel, equipment, and resources to manage their respective police operations. A peer-review panel, which included four police chiefs and the safety-audit administrator from the American Public Transportation Association, gave Chief Taylor's plan its endorsement, along with other recommendations on how the BART police could work more closely with other transit employees, communities, businesses, and schools that the transit district serves. Police command-level officers provide input to planners for BART's future extensions to Warm Springs and Santa Clara County. BART Police formerly had an eagle-top shield type badge, but in April 2011 switched to the 7-point star style traditional to Bay Area law enforcement. Uniforms are dark blue, similar to SFPD. Officers are only issued
SIG Sauer P320 pistols by the department, but have the option of using firearms approved by the department at their own expense.
Officer-involved fatalities Bruce Edward Seward In 2001, a mentally ill man named Bruce Edward Seward was shot by an officer at the Hayward Station. Reportedly the sleeping passenger awoke and grabbed the officer's nightstick causing the officer to reflexively shoot him; resulting in death.
Oscar Grant In 2009, officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot Oscar Grant III on the
Fruitvale station.
Eyewitnesses gathered
direct evidence of the shooting with cellular video cameras which were later submitted to
social networks such as
YouTube in addition to media outlets. The videos were watched hundreds of thousands of times online. In the days following the shooting, peaceful and violent demonstrations occurred. After an investigation and public uproar, Mehserle was arrested and charged with
second-degree murder, to which he pleaded not guilty. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2010 and was sentenced to two years. Mehserle served his sentence at the
Los Angeles County Jail and was released in 2011 on parole. Subsequent to the criminal trial Oakland
civil rights attorney
John Burris filed a US$25 million
wrongful death civil lawsuit against
BART on behalf of Grant's daughter and girlfriend. In response to the Grant shooting, BART created a civilian oversight committee to monitor police-related incidents. The civilian oversight of the BART Police Department is directly attributable to the leadership of Assemblyman
Sandre Swanson who authored the
legislation, BART director
Carole Ward Allen who lobbied members of the
California state legislature to create an oversight committee with an Independent Auditor position, and Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger who signed the bill into law.
Charles Hill In 2011, a mentally ill homeless man, Charles Blair Hill, assaulted two officers with weapons at the
Civic Center / UN Plaza station in San Francisco. As a result, he was shot by BART police. The department reported that Hill was drunk and armed with two knives and a broken bottle. Approximately twenty-three seconds after arriving on scene, the officers fired three rounds, striking Hill in the chest and killing him. BART Police chief Kenton Rainey stated lethal force was appropriate. The shooting of Charles Hill led to a non-violent but disruptive demonstration by approximately seventy-five protesters inside the Civic Center and
16th Street Stations on July 11. Demonstrators departing the 16th St Mission station returned downtown on Mission St, blocking traffic and engaging in acts of vandalism en route.
Sahleem Tindle Officer Joseph Mateu shot and killed Sahleem Tindle in January 2018. Officer Mateu had heard shots, and ran to the scene where two men were fighting over a gun. He intervened, firing into Tindle's back three times. The shooting resulted in a civil rights lawsuit against BART. Prosecutors wound up declining to file any charges.
Cell phone network shutdown On August 11, 2011, BART officials successfully prevented another evening-commute anti-police demonstration by shutting down the public cell phone network serving their jurisdiction in and between the downtown San Francisco stations. The police had received information that the protest was to be coordinated live via internet and text messages. This was the first documented instance of any government agency in the United States shutting down public communications to disrupt a protest. The
American Civil Liberties Union called the decision "in effect an effort by a governmental entity to silence its critics." == Operations ==