"Last week, Rep. Lateefah Simon called a conference inside Oakland's 19th Street BART station to introduce a federal bill that could have big implications for transit safety. There, Simon, who represents Berkeley and other East Bay cities in Congress, announced that she had introduced the Rapid Intervention and Deterrence for Enhanced Rider Safety Act, or the RIDER Safety Act, which would allow transit agencies across the country to tap federal crime prevention funds to pay for transit support specialists rather than exclusively law enforcement officers."
"The focus of these jobs is de-escalation and crisis response for riders at risk of harming themselves or others, in the spirit of Oakland's MACRO program, introduced in 2022, and BART's ambassador and crisis intervention roles, created in 2020 while Simon was a member of the BART board. The text of the bill, introduced in November and currently being debated in the Congressional Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, says that these unarmed roles will collaborate with law enforcement to deter and report disruptive behavior,"
The RIDER Safety Act would let transit agencies use federal crime-prevention funds to hire unarmed transit support specialists instead of relying solely on sworn law enforcement. These specialists would focus on de-escalation, crisis response for riders at risk, deterring disruptive behavior, aiding medical emergencies, and handling minor noncriminal conflicts while collaborating with law enforcement. The model follows Oakland's MACRO program and BART's ambassador and crisis intervention roles. Transit ambassadors ease burdens on sworn officers, allowing focus on urgent safety and violent crime; BART reports a 41% drop in system crime over the last year, credited partly to such collaboration.
Read at www.berkeleyside.org
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