BART robberies and assaults up, but felony arrests down

BART riders walk on a platform at the Fruitvale station on Friday, Aug. 4, 2017, in Oakland, Calif. BART riders walk on a platform at the Fruitvale station on Friday, Aug. 4, 2017, in Oakland, Calif. Photo: Noah Berger / Special To The Chronicle Photo: Noah Berger / Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close BART robberies and assaults up, but felony arrests down 1 / 28 Back to Gallery

Calls seeking help from BART police shot up in the first six months of the year at all but two of 46 train stations, keeping pace with a 35 percent increase in robberies and a 27 percent jump in assaults compared with the same period in 2016, agency figures show.

But while misdemeanor arrests were up through the end of June, along with citations for offenses such as fare evasion, felony arrests dropped 23 percent year to year.

BART officials say crime within the Bay Area’s backbone transit system remains relatively low, and there hasn’t been a homicide since January 2016. But the latest numbers — released to The Chronicle in response to a public records request — underscore a recent surge in crime that has alarmed riders and prompted officials to boost patrols.

The data provide a clearer picture of the challenges faced by the agency, which swore in a new police chief, Carlos Rojas, in late May.

The increase in crime this year has been heavily concentrated in a handful of stations in Oakland and San Francisco, stations that not only are busy hubs but are located in neighborhoods with relatively high crime rates. A recent unsettling attack happened on a train coming into Embarcardero Station on Saturday night. A girl in a group of 10 juveniles pepper-sprayed a couple in an attempted robbery and vanished through the station onto city streets just before 9 p.m.

Coliseum Station in Oakland — the site of a pair of violent robberies by groups of teenagers, one in April and the other in June — saw 23 robberies in the first half of the year, up from 17 in the same period in 2016. Assaults and batteries rose from eight to 17 at the station. Calls for police service there exploded, from 728 to 1,281, while average police response time to calls slowed considerably.

At Fruitvale Station to the northwest, robberies jumped from five to 16, year to year, and assaults and batteries rose from seven to 12. At Powell Station in San Francisco, assaults and batteries increased from 11 to 18. At nearby Civic Center Station, calls for service went from 1,405 to 2,285, a 63 percent climb.

“Crime is always very serious, and the BART Police Department is taking actions with the resources we have,” said Chris Filippi, an agency spokesman. “When you look at it with the context — an average of 430,000 people ride BART a day — the number of crimes that occur relative to that number is small.”

BART officials said that, according to their calculations, 1.6 robberies took place for every million passenger trips in 2016 — a number that could increase by a tenth of a percentage point this year.

But crime on BART has shaken many riders, including 73-year-old Berkeley resident Judy Grether. She said a friend was recently attacked by a man who had been aggressively panhandling at 12th Street/Oakland City Center Station.

“I think it’s outrageous,” she said. “So much of this could be prevented. It makes me afraid to ride BART. Especially at less busy times of day.”

She wants to see BART officers and other personnel become a more visible presence at stations.

“It makes a woman, or a child, or a person who is disabled, very vulnerable,” she said. “If I were to ride BART alone, I would be very watchful.”

Overall, police calls increased 29 percent in the first half of the year, rising at every station except North Concord and Glen Park in San Francisco. The drastic change, which may explain slower police response times to most stations, appears to be driven by more than criminal activity.

One potential cause for the increase in calls, officials said, is more people using the BART Watch app, which premiered in August 2014 and has since been downloaded by nearly 40,000 people.

“BART Watch is playing a big role in our calls for service,” Filippi said. “But there are multiple factors. Certainly BART crime has gotten a lot of attention in the media. The increase in calls reflects a greater awareness, and that’s something we encourage.”

There were six rapes reported in the first half of the year, up from one in the same period in 2016. Property crimes, including bike thefts and car break-ins at BART lots, went up 7 percent, while the number of stolen cars dropped by the same percentage.

Police arrested 132 people for felony crimes across the system though June 30, compared with 171 in the first six months of 2016.

Misdemeanor arrests, however, went up 10 percent, and citations rose 13 percent — an apparent reflection of high-profile efforts to cut down on fare cheats.

While dealing with the crime surge, BART has drawn criticism over how transparent it has been about the problem. The agency did not immediately publicize either of the mob robberies at Coliseum Station, which were revealed by The Chronicle.

Soon after Chief Rojas was sworn in, BART police stopped issuing daily summaries of crimes it had emailed to news agencies, replacing the logs with a online crime-mapping tool that offered few details of incidents. Facing criticism, officials resumed issuing the daily bulletins on July 18.

Meanwhile, BART scrambled to install security cameras inside all of its trains after The Chronicle revealed that most trains were equipped with decoys. The $1.42 million project was completed June 28.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky

Girl pepper-sprays pair at Embarcadero

A juvenile pepper-sprayed two BART riders Saturday night in an attempted robbery at Embarcadero Station, BART police said.

Officers who responded to the incident around 8:50 p.m. were unable to find the attacker, who was described as a female wearing a pink shirt and denim shorts. She was one of a group of 10 juveniles on the train, according to the police report.

The two people who were sprayed with Mace, a man and woman, were not injured in the incident. BART police had no further details Sunday.

In recent months, there have been two reports of large groups of teenagers staging robberies on BART. In the most recent incident in late June, a group of teens tried to steal an iPhone from a passenger at Coliseum Station in Oakland, but she got it back when another passenger intervened. In April, a group of teens robbed and assaulted riders at the same station.

There’s no indication, based on the little information available, that Saturday’s incident was a similar group robbery.

— Ryan Kost