BART directors get hit with safety complaints — from public and staff

Arriving passengers approach the fare gates at the 19th Street BART station in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018. BART is setting up a bus bridge between the West Oakland station and the 19th Street and Lake Merritt stations during selected weekends in August and September to perform critical track work. less Arriving passengers approach the fare gates at the 19th Street BART station in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018. BART is setting up a bus bridge between the West Oakland station and the 19th Street and ... more Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close BART directors get hit with safety complaints — from public and staff 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

BART Board President Robert Raburn got a stunning dress-down from an Oakland station agent Thursday after he and other directors took a mixed vote on the general manager’s call for more security on the crime-troubled transit system.

Raburn and other BART directors voted “yes” on installing emergency call boxes and upgrading security cameras, but “not yet” on banning panhandling or increasing the number of ticket checkers to curb gate jumping.

“I live in fear every day I come in here!” Raburn said the agent at the 19th Street Station told him when he stopped and asked how she was doing, something he had often done in the past.

Then, with her voice rising, the agent went off: “You have no idea how stressful it is for us. I can’t sleep at night. We need more police. We need protection!”

“The stress really showed,” Raburn told us. “It’s not just agents. We’re getting plenty of comments from riders as well.”

The BART board’s also hearing from customers. One rider wrote to the directors: “My husband and I and many, many of our friends will not ride BART anymore. The homeless sleep or roam, derelicts bother passengers, people eat and discard trash, there are needles and filth in the stations and cars, groups of gang-looking people go from car to car. It’s disgusting. Plus the stabbings put fear in us. Why do I want to subject myself to all this? I don’t. What is being done to clean up the whole BART system?”

But directors are also getting messages like this: “While I agree that safety needs to be improved on BART, I do not believe that further efforts to curtail gate jumping and or panhandling will improve safety on BART trains. I believe that these measures confuse poverty issues with safety issues, and are discriminatory.”

And therein lies the ongoing debate — how to have a safe system while letting poor people slide? — and it shows no sign of changing any time soon.

Crime or no crime.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@ sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross