The Importance in Involving the Community When Discussing Police Presence

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When discussing surveillance, crime prevention, and BART, it is important to recognize the history of community distrust of and violence from the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department (or BART Police). Numerous incidents of violence, most notably the shooting of Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station on New Year’s Day 2009, have brought this issue to mainstream news.

 

Often, the communities being served, especially communities of color and houseless communities, might be hesitant to trust or engage with the police due to this tension. Additionally, increasing the number of BART police officers poses some inherent risk to the safety of these community members.

 

Therefore, it is critical that the safety interventions and renovations of the BART be done in close collaboration with the community and social justice organizations. Discussions of what is criminal and what is safe, what is dangerous and threatening versus what is existence, must be at the forefront of community crime prevention.

 

For models such as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) to work effectively, factors such as identity and community engagement must thoroughly be assessed before implementing any lasting interventions or police surveillance.

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Addressing Potential Gentrification

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One risk of implementing changes to BART stations is the risk of gentrification. Gentrification occurs when one social class replaces another in a specific area, usually those who are wealthy being the ones occupying historically poor neighborhoods.
 

Some historical cases, such as the High Line in New York City, have shown that environmental improvements to a previously neglected space can lead to gentrification, because it makes the area more desirable to live in. By increasing desirability, those who haven’t previously occupied the space are more willing to move in nearby, outpricing historical tenants.
 

While our intentions are not to cause gentrification with BART improvements, such a possibility exists. These are the two ways that potential issue of gentrification is addressed:

1. Involving the community actively in the design process, and prioritizing community voices in design interventions and conceptualization: This is addressed through the fundamental democratic design of the website – it allows concerned residents to gather a following, to have agency in making smaller improvements.

2. The scale of our interventions: Our interventions are small in scale and are largely contained in the confines of the station, which will hopefully benefit regular users of the station in the surrounding area over users of the entire BART system.