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OAKLAND — Barbara Song, of Albany, is rethinking late-night trips on BART to pick up friends at the airport. Vallejo resident Michael Johnson said his coworkers who ride early in the morning are driving now, instead. Gina Wade, of Bay Point, is reconsidering letting her 17-year-old daughter travel to concerts and other events on the system.
“And, a bunch of my friends, we feel the same way,” Wade said. “We’ll probably end up taking her ourselves.”
For many BART riders, the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Nia Wilson on Sunday, coupled with two other fatal fights within a week, has left them shaken. But they’re still taking the trains to commute to work, even as many riders said they’re more on-guard.
Stephanie Fuentes, of San Pablo, rides BART nearly every day. She recently encountered a woman who was shouting at passengers on the train. Like Wilson, Fuentes was also riding with her sister around 9 p.m. that evening. The woman was getting aggressive and pushing her and her sister.
“It was really scary,” she said in Spanish. “But, I don’t have any other options to get to work. So, what can you do?”
The attacks are the latest black eye for BART, which has struggled to project an appearance of safety as it grapples with high-profile crimes. And, it comes at a time when the agency is expanding, with three new stations, at Warm Springs, Pittsburg Center and Antioch, starting service within the past 15 months and two more, the Milpitas and Berryessa stations, expected to open next year.
The agency came under fire following the last fatal attack on BART, in January, 2016, when gunshots rang out at the West Oakland station, killing 19-year-old Carlos Misael Funez-Romero. The investigation into that incident revealed BART was using dummy security cameras on many of its trains and didn’t have any surveillance footage of the attack, though cameras on station platforms captured images of the suspect, who remains at large.
The agency has since replaced all of its fake security cameras with real ones. Those cameras can record video, which can be viewed after the fact, said BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost, but they aren’t connected to the Internet for real-time viewing.
“That’d be great if they could,” said BART police Deputy Chief Ed Alvarez at a Tuesday press conference. Trost said the new train cars the agency is purchasing will have that capability, but it will take roughly three years to outfit the system with WiFi, which will enable real-time viewing.
Last year, BART struggled with a rash of strong-armed robberies, including one instance where roughly 50 young people entered the Coliseum station and pounded on the windows of a train before robbing seven people and injuring two. Six of the victims in the robbery have sued BART.
Despite a May press release touting a 16.5 percent increase in felony arrests and a 9 percent decrease in violent crimes, more recent data that includes May and June reveals a slightly different picture. Violent crime is up 2 percent, compared to the first six months of 2017, and aggravated assaults are up 28 percent over the same time period. Looking back a few years demonstrates an even more startling trend, with aggravated assaults up a whopping 70 percent from 2014.
The agency has hired 18 people over the past 18 months, Alvarez said, but it still has 25 officer vacancies. There are 10 officer candidates who, if they complete their training, will be sworn in and another 35 who have filled out applications, he said. BART’s 122 miles of tracks and 48 stations are now patrolled by 30 to 35 officers on any given shift, he said.
And, some BART riders think that’s not enough.
“You never see them randomly in the station or on the train,” said Richmond resident and daily commuter Cheryl Price. She drove into work on Monday following the attack on Wilson, but since she can’t park for free at her office, was back to riding BART on Tuesday. “I’ll see them outside, in the neighborhood of the BART stations but not inside.”
Others think more cops mean more problems, especially for people of color.
“The first thing I think of is Fruitvale station,” said El Cerrito resident Bill Jacox, referring to the Jan. 1, 2009, fatal shooting of Oscar Grant by BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle. “There wasn’t a problem because of lack of police there. In fact, that was the problem.”
Still, Jacox is hoping the latest attacks don’t cause a mass exodus of riders from the station.
“If people stopped taking BART because they are afraid, that would have a dramatic effect in other areas,” he said. “Traffic is bad enough as it is.“
