Kevin Franklin named BART's new chief of police

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has named Kevin Franklin as its new chief of police.

The selection of Franklin is the result of a thorough, nationwide search process involving a collaboration between BART, the Police Citizen Review Board and BART’s Independent Police Auditor.

Franklin was appointed interim BART Police Department (BPD) chief in May after the retirement of Ed Alvarez and quickly established his commitment to ensuring BART is the safest way to travel around the Bay Area.

“Chief Franklin is a life-long BART rider with an intimate knowledge of the system and its police department,” said BART General Manager Bob Powers. “Kevin was instrumental in BPD’s new deployment strategy that has significantly increased the presence of uniformed police personnel on trains and in stations. He is not only detail-oriented, but a creative thinker with a deep commitment to our community. I am confident his leadership will help BART continue to improve the safety of our riders.”

Recent BPD accomplishments for rider safety spearheaded by Franklin include:

• 349 felony arrests through July, the highest year-to-date total since the pandemic.
• Average response times to Priority 1 calls at approximately four minutes, among the fastest in the Bay Area.
• Working with the BART Board of Directors to ensure BPD is offering competitive salaries to attract qualified officer candidates.
• Earned advanced certification from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), ensuring BPD is meeting and exceeding the industry’s highest standards.

“A clean, safe, rider-focused BART is critical to the Bay Area economy and to the hundreds of thousands in our community who rely on our service every day,” said Franklin. “Ensuring all our riders feel secure will be my first and last priority as chief. I’m proud of the community-oriented policing strategies we are deploying and I know we can do even better. The crises of addiction and mental health are bigger than any single agency, but BART PD is already implementing innovative alternative strategies to address these tremendous challenges. I’m going to keep rolling up my sleeves to make sure we are leading the way forward in support of a healthier, safer Bay Area.”

Franklin is a 27-year veteran of the BPD, an Oakland native and an East Bay resident. He began his law enforcement career at the Oakland Police Department, where he served as a police cadet and police officer before transferring to the BPD in 1996.

Franklin’s BPD career includes serving as interim chief since May, deputy chief of both the Operations and Support Services bureaus, leading BPD’s Internal Affairs division, serving as manager of security programs, as well as extensive patrol experience as he worked his way up the chain of command after starting as a police officer.

A University of California, Berkeley graduate, Franklin also holds a Master of Science degree in Criminal Justice from California Coast University and has graduated from the FBI National Academy and the Police Executive Research Forum Senior Management Institute for Police.

Franklin has had a connection to BART from its very first day of service. As a three-year-old toddler, he and his family attended the opening day of the regional transit system on Sept. 11, 1972, taking the train from Lake Merritt Station to Fremont Station and back.