DUBLIN -- A series of BART police reforms
following the fatal 2009 shooting of unarmed train rider Oscar Grant led to
major changes in the transit police force, including a new chief, new
commanders, wearable video cameras and a culture shift that demanded officers
treat commuters and criminal suspects with respect, not just brute authority.
But some police watchdogs believe none of those
reforms prepared the BART Police Department for the latest tragedy to befall
the agency, this time a mile away from the closest rail station, when a BART
police officer fatally shot his colleague Tuesday after they entered a robbery
suspect's apartment in Dublin.
"In my 35 years there, we never lost an
officer, let alone have a friendly-fire death. It's a little beyond
understanding," said Suzanne Angeli, a retired BART employee who sat on a
police oversight board formed in the wake of the Grant tragedy.
Even after years of intense public scrutiny and
stricter training requirements on the use of force, longtime observers of
BART's police operations were left as confused as anyone about what could have
gone so wrong Tuesday. Ironically, Angeli said the detective who died, Sgt. Tom
Smith Jr., was intimately involved in the very reform efforts that were
supposed to make the police agency and the public safer.
"BART recognized they had a need for a lot
of reforms of their police department," said Mark Smith, BART's
independent police auditor who is now monitoring the investigation of how Smith
was killed.
A state bill proposed by then-Assemblyman
Sandré Swanson, D-Alameda, and signed in 2010 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
created the new three-person auditor's office to help investigate complaints
against officers. It also established the citizen advisory board, of which
Angeli was one of the original members, whose mission included looking at
whether BART's policing practices were biased against African-Americans and
other groups.
"What happened with the Oscar Grant
incident was it brought to light that things had maybe stagnated, and it was
time to bring in new people," said Angeli, who is also a former mayor of
Pleasant Hill. "It was time to bring everybody up to date with how to deal
with the new ethnicity of the Bay Area."
Though he worked for BART for two decades, Tom
Smith was one of the new guard tasked to help guide reforms "because he
was very well-liked, he was very responsible, and he communicated well,"
able to deal with a lot of different stakeholders "without any
arrogance," Angeli said. The police chief assigned Smith to deal with the
public on some training and reform issues, including when a BART officer
fatally shot a homeless man at a San Francisco station in 2011.
But many of those reforms -- which included the
wearing of lapel cameras by uniformed officers -- were focused on how BART
officers connect with the public on trains and station platforms, not how they
conduct investigations far from BART property.
While most of the Bay Area public only
interacts with BART police officers who are patrolling trains and rail
stations, the BART police force is like any other law enforcement agency, with
a detective force that investigates crimes and travels around the region to
pursue leads and make arrests. That's what Smith and the officers who
accompanied him were doing when they entered an unlocked Dublin apartment
Tuesday in pursuit of a missing iPhone and other stolen items.
When it comes to BART's normal tactical
operations, "the level of training is at or above the standard of other
agencies," said Lafayette lawyer Benjamin Douglas, another member of the
BART police oversight board.
Of all the reforms, "I don't think any of
it bears directly on what happened" Tuesday, Douglas said.
A top-down audit by the National Organization
of Black Law Enforcement Executives that was completed in 2010 recommended a
host of changes that needed to be made at BART, including how officers are
trained on the use of force. A consultant just last month commended the BART
Police Department for successfully implementing many changes.
Among the skeptics are the family members of
Grant, who was shot and killed by BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle in the
early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2009. News of another officer-involved shooting
reopened the wounds for a family that just marked the fifth anniversary of
Grant's death.
"Are BART officers really in need of a
weapon? We say that they're not. Their training hasn't been sufficient. Now
they're shooting each other," said Grant's uncle, Cephus "Bobby"
Johnson.
Johnson and other family members believe the
reform measures remain insufficient.
"There has to be a failure of training
somewhere, unless this shooting was intentional," Johnson said. "The
use-of-force training they utilize is really inadequate. ... BART has not
passed the test."
