Updated on January 15, 2021 at 10:13 am
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The BART Police Department on Thursday unveiled plans to begin collecting racial data during each and every police stop throughout the transit system.
California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA), passed by the legislature in 2015, requires law enforcement agencies across the state to collect demographic data during all police stops by April 2023. BART, however, just announced it hopes to begin complying with the mandate by October of this year.
BART’s promise to improve its efforts in gathering demographic data comes in the wake of an NBC Bay Area investigation that revealed a complete lack of racial data collection during an ongoing police operation at BART’s Embarcadero Station.
Report on BART reveals racial disparity in policing, agency commits to change
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BART’s Police Department is committing to six new measures for more equitable policing, including a new policy on drawing and deploying guns, after recommendations from an outside agency in a long-anticipated report published Jan. 8.Jessica Christian / The Chronicle 2020
BART’s Police Department is committing to six new measures for more equitable policing, including updating its gun use policy, following recommendations from an outside agency in a long-anticipated report published Friday.
The Center for Policing Equity, a research think tank, reviewed BART police data from 2012 to 2017. Its study revealed that BART police were more likely to stop Black people and use force against them. Nearly one in four use-of-force incidents involved police holding or pointing a gun, a majority of times at Black people.