Zone commanders and their personnel form working partnerships with BART riders, employees, community groups, educational institutions, and businesses.

The goal is to ensure that personal safety, quality of life, and protection of property remain among BART's top priorities for the stakeholders in its community.

In 1969, three years before BART opened for revenue service, the transit district's board of directors recommended that local police and sheriff's departments patrol the stations, trains, rights-of-way, and other BART-owned properties that were within their respective jurisdictions.

In July 1993, then-police chief Harold Taylor recommended a comprehensive plan to decentralize the department into four geographical police zones, each with its own headquarters and field offices.

A peer-review panel, which included four police chiefs and the safety-audit administrator from the American Public Transportation Association, gave Chief Taylor's plan its endorsement, along with other recommendations on how the BART police could work more closely with other transit employees, communities, businesses, and schools that the transit district serves.

Police command-level officers provide input to planners for BART's future extensions to Warm Springs and Santa Clara County.

BART Police formerly had an eagle-top shield type badge, but in April 2011 switched to the 7-point star style traditional to Bay Area law enforcement.

[4][5] Eyewitnesses gathered direct evidence of the shooting with cellular video cameras which were later submitted to social networks such as YouTube in addition to media outlets.

The civilian oversight of the BART Police Department is directly attributable to the leadership of Assemblyman Sandre Swanson who authored the legislation, BART director Carole Ward Allen who lobbied members of the California state legislature to create an oversight committee with an Independent Auditor position, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who signed the bill into law.

[9] In 2011, a mentally ill homeless man, Charles Blair Hill, assaulted two officers with weapons at the Civic Center / UN Plaza station in San Francisco.

The shooting of Charles Hill led to a non-violent but disruptive demonstration by approximately seventy-five protesters inside the Civic Center and 16th Street Stations on July 11.

[12] On August 11, 2011, BART officials successfully prevented another evening-commute anti-police demonstration by shutting down the public cell phone network serving their jurisdiction in and between the downtown San Francisco stations.

The police department has: criminal investigation, personnel and training, record, warrant, crime analysis, traffic administration, property and evidence, and revenue protection divisions.