BART to hire social workers instead of filling police officer vacancies to deal with social problemshttps://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-to-hire-social-workers-instead-of-filling-15857032.phpBART plans to use nearly $2 million budgeted to fill six vacant police officer positions to hire social work-trained civilians to respond to homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction that plague the train system.
The new plan unveiled Friday adds a supervisor and 20 crisis intervention specialists to connect people in need with services — twice as many as were approved by the board last year — to the agency’s new bureau of progressive policing. It will also re-deploy 10 existing sworn officers, two sergeants and two community service officers to the bureau. The plan is to pair a civilian with an officer who can stand by in case law enforcement is needed.
The plan, which will be presented to the board on Thursday and doesn’t require a vote to move forward, follows national upheaval over policing and internal discussion over the past seven months about how BART should deal with social problems.
I'll take
Harebrained Ideas that Will Get People Killed or Injured for $200, Alex.
I'm sure the vast majority of BART riders are decent people heading for work. Mixed in, though, are thugs using BART for access and egress to commit thuggery and a lot of homeless people whose connection with reality is slender or none. It doesn't take a huge percentage of violent people to create chaos.
