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BART looks to increase unarmed crisis staff as part of progressive police bureau
KGO
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SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) BART Police have announced a new plan to increase the number of crisis intervention specialists at stations throughout their system.
The plan, discussed at the BART Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, is an expansion of a program first announced last year under the newly formed Progressive Policing and Community Engagement Bureau.
In total, BART Police plan to employ 20 crisis intervention specialists along with 10 other unarmed police ambassadors. The bureau will also include 10 sworn officers.
The teams will consist of two crisis specialists and one sworn officer, spread across five different stations in two shifts.
More than a decade after a white former policeman was convicted of manslaughter for shooting an unarmed Black man to death on a California train platform, a second transit officer involved in the incident was cleared of criminal charges on Monday. A months-long renewed investigation of officer Anthony Pirone's role in events leading to the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant found that Pirone cannot be charged with murder or any other criminal offense in the death, prosecutors announced. The inquiry, conducted at the request of Grant's family, concluded that former Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle alone was criminally responsible for fatally shooting Grant in the back as he lay on a BART passenger platform in Oakland in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2009.