Deploying more officers on BART trains resulted in increased felony arrests over the past year, according to the transit agency.

The rapid transit system saw a 62 percent increase in arrests last year compared to 2022. The jump coincides with recruitment efforts of new officers and a strategic increase in the presence of safety personnel aboard trains, according to a statement from BART on Thursday.

Officers logged a total of 726 felony arrests in 2023, a sharp rise from the 448 recorded in the preceding year. They confiscated 49 illegal firearms, the highest number recovered by BART police in a single year since at least 2003. 

BART Police Chief Kevin Franklin said the impact is the result of deploying more patrol officers on trains, noting that riders have reported noticing a palpable difference in safety. The latest quarterly performance review revealed that 20 percent of riders reported seeing BART police during their trips, an increase from the previous record of 17 percent in the preceding quarter.

Some of the illegal firearms seized by BART police in recent arrests. March 28, 2024 (BART via Bay City News)
An example of an illegal firearm seized by BART police in recent arrests. March 28, 2024 (BART via Bay City News)

The most frequent crime on BART is disturbing others and other code of conduct violations, according to a BART spokesperson.

BART employs around 214 police officers, around the same number they have had for years, the spokesperson said, but the arrests are due to the increased presence on trains.

In a bid to address staffing shortages, they have implemented a 22 percent salary increase for officers to be competitive with other law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area. 

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.