BART Police
| Bay Area Rapid Transit District Police Department | |
|---|---|
| Common name | BART Police |
| Abbreviation | BARTPD |
Current patch of the BART Police Department
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Former patch of the BART Police Department
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| Agency overview | |
| Formed | 1972 |
| Legal personality | Governmental: Government agency |
| Jurisdictional structure | |
| Operations jurisdiction* | State of California, United States |
| Size | 2,667.49 sq. mi. (6,909 km²) (land area in 4 counties) |
| Population | 4,082,982 (4 county area) |
| Legal jurisdiction | San Francisco Bay Area, California |
| Governing body | Bay Area Rapid Transit District |
| General nature |
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| Operational structure | |
| Headquarters | Oakland, California, U.S. |
| Officers | 206 |
| Unsworn members | 90 |
| Agency executive | Kenton Rainey, Chief |
| Divisions | 4 |
| Facilities | |
| Stations | 11 |
| Website | |
| www |
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| Footnotes | |
| * Divisional agency: Division of the country, over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction. | |
The BART Police (BARTPD), officially the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department, is the transit police agency of the BART rail system in the U.S. state of California. The department has approximately three hundred police personnel including over two-hundred sworn peace officers. The chief, Kenton Rainey commands the agency's: law enforcement, parking, and community relations services. BART Police participates in a mutual aid agreement with other Bay Area law enforcement agencies. In 2011 and 2012 the department came under national scrutiny due to several officers involved in fatalities of the rail system's patrons.
When terrorism began to be treated as a more active threat after the September 11 attacks, BART increased its emphasis on infrastructure protection. The police department hosts drills and participates in counter-terrorism working groups. The agency has an officer assigned full-time to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. Furthermore, a command officer is designated as a mutual-aid, counter-terrorism, and homeland-security liaison. BART's police dogs are certified in explosives detection.
The stated goal of the BART Police Department is to build a more community-oriented police force that is tough on crime and strong on customer service. Zone commanders and their personnel form working partnerships with BART riders, employees, community groups, educational institutions, and businesses. The goal is to ensure that personal safety, quality of life, and protection of property remain among BART’s top priorities for the stakeholders in its community.
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.
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Wikipedia