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BART Deputy Chief Called to Resign After Involvement in Alleged 2024 Assault

Advocates criticized the decision to hire a former San Leandro police lieutenant who was caught on camera during the assault of an unhoused man.
Ayah Ali-Ahmad
Oakland police officers walk through a crime scene outside the West Oakland BART station on Jan. 3, 2018. Advocates criticized the decision to hire a former San Leandro police lieutenant who was caught on camera during the assault of an unhoused man.  (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Activists are demanding that a BART deputy chief resign for her involvement in a 2024 incident where San Leandro police officers allegedly assaulted and abandoned an unhoused Black man — miles away from where they initially detained him.

The footage of the alleged assault, first reported by ABC7 News, shows San Leandro officers detaining 33-year-old Shaquille Coleman at a shopping center in December 2024. Officers could not arrest or place him on a psychiatric hold because he had not committed a crime, according to ABC7. They then transported him 7 miles north, to Oakland, their body camera audio recording their usage of the word “dump.” The footage also showed an officer pulling out Coleman’s braids during the encounter.

Former San Leandro Police Lt. Antwinette Turner was present at the scene. She has since joined BART as deputy chief of its Progressive Policing and Community Engagement Bureau. Advocates who condemned her involvement and called for her resignation pointed out that the video footage revealed Turner watching and laughing during the incident.

Community members and organizers packed a May 11 BART Police Civilian Review Board meeting — the second consecutive month that they have attended — demanding Turner’s immediate resignation and an investigation into how she was hired. Cat Brooks, executive director of the Anti-Police Terror Project, said the board was receptive.

“As she was watching this Black man be brutalized, she thought it was funny,” Brooks said. “That callousness — I don’t know what that says about you as a human being.”

The San Leandro Police Department launched an independent third-party investigation after an internal affairs sergeant filed a complaint about the incident. Its investigation found that certain personnel violated department policies and faced corrective action, the city told ABC7. The sergeant who filed the complaint, Mike Olivera, has, in turn, faced alleged retaliation, according to his attorney.

Brooks said activists are also calling for the resignation of BART Police Chief Kevin Franklin, citing his response to questions from ABC7 reporter Dan Noyes about the incident. According to Brooks and the ABC7 report, Franklin dropped a reporter’s microphone and walked away without answering questions about Turner’s role, admitting that they hadn’t reviewed body camera footage before hiring her.

Brooks said that the BART Office of the Independent Police Auditor has opened an investigation into both the incident and Turner. A proposal for next steps is expected to be presented to the oversight commission in the coming weeks or months.

BART Police and Turner did not immediately respond to KQED’s requests for comment.

The activists plan to return to the board’s next monthly meeting, said Brooks, who added that “This cannot be allowed to stand.”

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