BART Police Chief announces $10,000 hiring bonus to promote officer recruitment

Starting March 19, 2019, BART Police Department has increased its hiring bonus to $15,000.

The BART Police Department is streamlining its hiring process and is now offering for the first time ever a $10,000 hiring bonus for academy graduates or experienced officers. 

The initiatives are part of the new Police Chief’s overall strategy to bolster police presence in our stations, trains, and platforms.  BART police are already working overtime to increase their visible presence in the system and the hiring of more officers is critical to maintaining that effort.  BART hopes to hire 39 additional officers within 18 months.

“We are doing everything we can to hire qualified candidates and make sure we are fully staffed,” said BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas.  “We will never lower our hiring standards.  By implementing common-sense reforms, we have been able to shorten the hiring process by months.”

BART is using a variety of outreach tools to attract new officers.   BART will wrap the exterior of a train car with a recruitment message (being developed now).  Recruitment posters will soon be placed onboard trains and in stations and recruiting staff attend many community events each year.  BPD also has kiosk advertisements at Las Positas, Diablo Valley, Gavilan, Solano, American River, and Los Rios colleges as well as Cal State University East Bay.

Interested applicants can learn more at www.bart.gov/police

Thinking about joining? Here are a few things to consider:

We’re a perfect size agency. Not too big where you’re just a number and not too small where there’s little room for movement or promotion.

You can live and/or work all over the Bay Area in different communities.

BART gives you $4000 per year for educational reimbursement for the rest of your career.

BART pays for everything including $1050 uniform allowance and $50 monthly gym membership.

BART pays for your academy and you earn a salary while in the academy.

We have state of the art equipment.

We’ve had body cameras for years and have helped other agencies implement camera programs.

All officers are Crisis Intervention certified with the Memphis Model course.

Our agency is highly progressive, staying in the forefront of leadership and modern law enforcement concepts like De-Escalation training, Fair and Impartial policing training.

Our agency is more diverse than the last census of the SF Bay Area.