BART replaces all decoy cameras on train cars with real ones

A surveillance camera is seen on the ceiling of a BART train in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. A surveillance camera is seen on the ceiling of a BART train in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close BART replaces all decoy cameras on train cars with real ones 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A $1.42 million project to replace fake security cameras inside BART’s train cars was completed Wednesday — giving police a valuable tool to catch criminals that’s already paying off, officials said.

But perhaps the most notorious crime on a BART train in recent memory remains unsolved, and investigators have no video of the January 2016 killing of an Antioch man because most cameras on board trains at the time were nothing more than decoys.

An investigation by The Chronicle in the days after the fatal shooting near the West Oakland Station revealed that more than two-thirds of cameras on BART trains were bogus. What appeared to be video units were really empty camera housings with blinking lights used to deter vandals.

After The Chronicle exposed BART’s fake-camera strategy, the agency promised to outfit its 669 cars with working cameras by July 1, and on Wednesday — three days before deadline — crews turned on the final camera at a morning news conference.

“This is a huge tool for us,” said Lt. Terence McCarty, chief of investigations for BART police. “One of the first investigative steps is to try to locate video, and having working video in every train car is a huge public safety tool.”

Thanks to on-board video cameras that have been going in over the past year, BART police said they identified and arrested two juvenile suspects in a startling takeover robbery in April in which dozens of people mobbed a train stopped at Oakland’s Coliseum Station.

The attack came amid a 45 percent increase in robberies over the past year on BART trains and in its stations. Despite the uptick in robberies, agency officials stress that the overall crime rate in its system is relatively low. The new cameras, McCarty said, have helped BART police make more arrests for cell phone thefts and other crimes.

The new video systems on trains include four digital cameras on each car, DVRs and housing units, costing $463,749. After labor and other materials, the total cost of the project came out to $1.42 million.

BART has a robust network of high-end security cameras on platforms and inside and outside stations that have been operating for years.

But unlike the station cameras that can be viewed in real time, the footage from the moving trains will not be instantly accessible. Investigators will be required to pull the footage off a digital recorder set up on each train car.

With the decoy controversy dealt with, BART has been working to encourage riders to start taking note of their train-car number when they board, so if they report a crime, investigators can locate the video footage more easily.

Such on-train footage could have been helpful to investigators after 19-year-old Antioch resident Carlos Misael Funez-Romero was shot dead on a crowded BART train in Oakland on Jan. 9, 2016.

The gunman fled out of the West Oakland station and disappeared into the neighborhood.

BART police released several images of the killer — a tall black man with close-cut hair, wearing a dark green jacket, a backpack, jeans and beige work boots — taken on the security cameras in the stations. No arrest was ever made, and the case continues to vex investigators.

“When someone is murdered it is always very disturbing,” McCarty said. “It’s concerning for us when we can’t arrest someone who is so violent. Someone knows him, but no one is saying anything.”

Both men had boarded the BART train at the Pittsburg/Bay Point Station 30 miles away and had some sort of “interaction” while riding a Tri Delta Transit bus on the way to BART, officials said.

Police have not determined a motive for the killing, and it is not clear if the men knew each other.

BART’s new cameras come as the agency begins to introduce modernized cars into the system over the next five years. The new fleet is already equipped with on-board cameras, making the recently installed video equipment irrelevant as the old cars are replaced.