BART police chief to address report showing racial disparity in citations

Today BART's police chief will present his plan to decrease racial disparities after a report shows black BART riders are ticketed more than people of other races.

Black BART riders only make up 10 percent of riders but in 2018 more than half of all "quality of life" citations were issued to black riders.

BART Police Chief Ed Alvarez will address what appears to be a systemic issue in a meeting later today and present a plan to fix the problem.

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The citations were for what BART considers "quality of life violations" for things like fare evasion, loud music, or things like eating or smoking on the train. BART officers have been trained on avoiding racial profiling since 2015, but still the issue is prevalent.

Here are the percentages for fare evasion citations issued in 2019: 50% to black riders, 22% to white riders, 14% to Hispanic riders, 3% to Asian riders and 11% to unknown/other riders.

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