Bart Stations At Both Extremes Of Crime Rates

Powell, the third-busiest station in the system, sees a lively mixture of tourists, shoppers, vagrants and street musicians. Like BART’s other three stations beneath San Francisco’s Market Street, Powell is also a Muni Metro subway station, which adds to its hectic nature. Unlike Embarcadero and Montgomery stations, which are thick with office workers during commute hours, or Civic Center, bulging with bureaucrats working government schedules, Powell stays busy all day. Many of those are for what BART calls “quality of life” crimes — like public urination, vagrancy and disturbing the peace. BART says police are enforcing a building code requirement to keep station access clear, but homeless advocates say they’re illegally rousting homeless people. With the mall, the BART station, parking lots, an AC Transit bus hub and roads connecting them all, Bay Fair sits in the midst of concrete suburbia. A wall of thick, tall iron bars stands guard around the entrance to the station, giving it a somewhat intimidating look. Signs warning against loitering, begging, soliciting and open containers are tagged with graffiti. Crime statistics show that Bay Fair has a high number of robberies and thefts. The station sports an unusual design with a small entry plaza, a compact street-level concourse with a marble mural and a glass ceiling and long stairways and escalators to the subterranean train platforms. BART police recorded two violent crimes at Glen Park in the 10-month periods in 2013 and 2014, including a rape in 2013, a robbery in 2014 and an assault or battery each year. There’s a steady flow of passengers on and off trains, which sit at the station for several minutes while drivers get out of one end of the train and walk to the other.