Nearly five years after a BART officer's killing of train rider Oscar Grant exposed deep problems within the transit agency's police force, the department has made solid progress in implementing reforms, an independent auditor said Thursday.
The 200-officer force has "exceeded expectations" in working toward overhauling the department, said audit director Patrick Oliver, a former police chief who directs the criminal justice program at Cedarville University in Ohio.
"Significant progress has been made since then," Oliver said, adding, "This is a good agency that can become a great agency."
Oliver reviewed the department's effort to put in place recommendations that had been made in a 2009 audit he had conducted on behalf of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.
The audit released Thursday said BART created "strict lines of accountability" by hiring three deputy chiefs, began consistently reviewing reports of officers using force, and instituted comprehensive training for officers.
The 2009 audit had depicted an agency hamstrung by outdated policies, lax oversight, poor training of officers and no strategic direction.
"The culture was dysfunctional," Oliver said. "It wasn't serving what a law-enforcement agency is trying to achieve. It wasn't serving the ridership of the community in the way that they deserved to be served."
BART Police Chief Kenton Rainey, who took command in 2010, said the current culture "is one of professionalism, accountability, and you have a really, really hard-working police force that really wants to do the right thing for the communities with a lot of pride."
Rainey acknowledged there may be "outsiders that still don't trust us, don't feel that we have gone far enough, just like there's some inside my department that feel we've gone too far."
The audits were commissioned after Grant, a 22-year-old Hayward resident, was shot in the back by then-BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, who was in the process of handcuffing him at Oakland's Fruitvale Station in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2009.
BART's response to the killing was troubled from the start. None of the seven officers who were at Fruitvale Station even radioed in that an officer-involved shooting had taken place.
Weeks after the incident, the sergeant in charge of the investigation and two of his detectives were sent to courses on how to handle officer-involved shootings.
Mehserle served half of a two-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter after a trial in which he said he had meant to shoot Grant with his Taser rather than a gun. BART later ended a money-saving practice in which officers were forced to share both Tasers and holsters for the devices.
"We have a much more professional Police Department today than we did several years ago," BART board director Joel Keller said Thursday. "The community is beginning to feel that BART's intentions of making this department a part of the community were sincere."
John Burris, an attorney who secured total settlements of $2.8 million from BART on behalf of Grant's mother and daughter and was interviewed by Oliver, agreed.
"There seems to be marked improvements," Burris said. "We have not had many (misconduct) cases from them, and from that I assume that progress has been made in terms of reducing the number of excessive-force complaints."
Copyright 2013 - San Francisco Chronicle
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
