Thursday, September 13, 2007

Crimes on BART premises

Thanks to an anonymous poster who sent this to me. I guess I should consider myself pretty lucky that I've never been a victim of carjacking, beating, or mugging in BART parking lots, but apparently, it's not uncommon.

Generally, my daily BART rides are fairly uneventful where the most notable things are seeing people eat on BART, fight for seats, wear heavy perfumes, skip fares, hold up the escalators, or fumbling baby strollers...etc. One of the few times I actually raise "real" issues such as suspicious activities or crude, offensive verbal harassment within a BART station, it turned into a debate about citizens having the responsibility to report these incidents to BART police otherwise the authorities are not, and cannot be held responsible for these activities, nor can they proactively do anything to stop them because the law doesn't work that way. I still don't think that's right but I've learned a new perspective.

But what about these muggings and beating?? These hot spots for carjackings? Assuming these incidents were properly filed with BART Police, do they try to catch these offenders in action the next time they strike or do the reports just sit in a file cabinet? Is something being done to protect passengers before more crimes take place? Are there more police surveillance in those areas? Is it unreasonable (probably so) to ask BART Police to be more proactive, rather than reactive? Hey, I may be completely wrong here-- perhaps BART Police are already all over those hot spots for crimes and because of their action and presence, passengers are no longer being mugged, beaten, or carjacked. One can hope.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I suspect one could compile a similar story by picking a dozen landmarks of a similar type (say, shopping mall parking lots) and tracking incidents over a three month period.

I hope the BART police are working with the local police force, too. The parking lot is the interface between BART and the community, so both police forces ought to be able to bring some force to bear on the hot spots.