Bay City News Service
Three BART trains were delayed Tuesday morning after a handgun sighting on a platform at the Pleasant Hill BART station caused a stir among morning commuters, police said.
BART police responded around 8 a.m. to a train operator's report of a man with a gun in his waistband at the station. Officers arrived on the platform with their guns drawn, giving some morning commuters a scare and causing three trains to be held as police investigated. After speaking with the man with the concealed gun, police learned that he was an off-duty police officer, BART police Lt. Aaron Ledford said.
"Once we determined that he was off-duty law enforcement, we released the trains," he said. The incident caused delays of up to 20 minutes, he said. Although it turned out there was no hazard to the public, Ledford credited the train operator who reported the weapon for his quick reaction in a potentially dangerous situation.
Thanks for the delay!
I can speak to this with a good deal of experience, even though I never worked for Miami PD. Carrying an upholstered concealed weapon in your waist band is a bad idea (for the reasons cited in the comments.) If the officer violated his/her department policy regarding how the weapon was being carried, I can say with a high degree of certainty that he/she will be disciplined in the proper manner. However, where does it say in the article that the officer did not have the weapon in a holster? Most holsters are worn on the waist attached or clipped to a belt etc. Certain holsters are designed to be worn inside the waist band and are not visible. One could easily say in simple terms, “He wore the weapon in his waist band” and unintentionally exclude the possibility of a holster for the sake of brevity. I don’t see in the article where it says the officer was not using a holster as suggested in the comments.
I don’t agree with the idea of a panicked response, either on the part of an officer (or any person for that matter) when encountering the sight of a person carrying a concealed weapon or ANY potentially dangerous situation. I think we are all capable of much more than that. I suppose one could panic; although, I don’t know why; it’s too much of a hindrance to thought. Perhaps, the panic you speak of might be some kind of involuntary response. I don’t deny that it’s possible for all of us. That said, I can testify that officers are trained not to panic, to control their emotions, to evaluate, to calculate, observe, and synthesize all the information at hand to form a reasonable and justified response within the law. And, I think we all have some level of faith that our officers would not panic in the face of potentially dangerous situations.
I can understand why you see what you see in this article. However, I have a different perspective. It’s one from having been there. What I see is a call made to the police about a man carrying a gun in his waist band. We don’t know if it was carried unsafely or if he was flagrant in his concealment efforts. The police responded appropriately. They know they “might” also be dealing with an off duty cop; it’s always a possibility in the context of this particular kind of call. I know I would have considered it a possibility. You don’t know the responding officers were not able to tell he was an off-duty cop. You can’t say that because you weren’t there not have you talked to any of the officers involved to tell us what they saw and thought.