BART PD’s Progressive Policing Bureau wins prestigious national award for innovation
The BART Police Department’s Progressive Policing and Community Engagement Bureau has won the American Public Transportation Association’s national Innovation Award. The Progressive Policing and Community Engagement Bureau (PPCEB) has established itself as a national model by increasing BART’s safety presence while ensuring the system is welcoming to all members of the community. The PPCEB is a trail blazing part of the effort to ensure BART is the safest way to travel across the Bay Area.
“The members of the Progressive Policing and Community Engagement Bureau are force multipliers for rider safety,” said BART PD interim Chief Kevin Franklin. “The bureau has become a national model with both transit and traditional law enforcement agencies reaching out to us to learn more about the innovative steps we’re taking to boost safety for our riders.”
The numbers show how the PPCEB is boosting rider safety. In the first six months of this year members of the PPCEB performed more than 10,700 welfare checks on people in the BART system who appeared to need help. There were more than 2,500 instances when PPCEB members intervened when they saw violations of BART’s Code of Conduct. In the past those violations would have required a response by a sworn officer. Instead, members of the PPCEB can offer a more appropriate response with unarmed, specially trained BART PD staff. That has freed up sworn officers to respond more quickly to urgent emergency calls. BART PD has one of the fastest response times for tier 1 emergency calls at an average of just more than 4 minutes.
The PPCEB is primarily composed of non-sworn Transit Ambassadors and Crisis Intervention Specialists. These unarmed employees of BART PD receive specialized training in de-escalation techniques. Transit Ambassadors walk dozens of trains and platforms each day. They’re equipped with radios to report safety concerns. They observe, report, and call upon traditional sworn officers when enforcement is needed. Crisis Intervention Specialists have backgrounds in social work and specialize in connecting people at risk with potentially lifesaving services.
The PPCEB was launched in 2020. It was the first of its kind for a transit agency in the U.S. The BART PD model stands out because members of the PPCEB are full-time BART PD employees as opposed to contractors that many other systems rely on. The bureau builds on a history of more than a decade of reform efforts aimed at elevating equitable policing at BART.