What is it with Bay Area law enforcement and their racist text messages? Yet another such scandal just hit the BART Police force, in a video where BART Police officers singled out a Sikh colleague for mockery.
Many San Franciscans still remember the 2015-16 SFPD racist text message scandal, one of the many embarrassments that cost then-Chief Greg Suhr his job. And then the East Bay had its own racist text message mess first with the Oakland PD in 2016 — they then had a second scandal in 2021 involving racist and sexist memes shared on social media — then through much of 2025 the Antioch Police Department had its own text message scandal.
Now it's the BART Police Department in the racist text barrel. The Chronicle reports that BART Police officers were circulating a racist AI deepfake video, one that actually mocked one of their own Sikh colleagues, and also depicted real-life BART Police Chief Kevin Franklin.
The Chronicle actually obtained the video, whose original, which was derived from a real BART Police Instagram post. The original video shows the Sikh officer being sworn in by Chief Franklin, but in the racist deepfake version, Franklin removes the Sikh officer's turban to reveal a handgun hidden inside. The video was reportedly texted around by several BART Police officers.
Per the Chronicle, the Sikh officer remains on “stress-related leave.” The officer who admitted to producing the AI video was put on administrative leave for “several weeks,” though has since returned to active duty, and is “remaining in his supervisory role.”
“Supervisory role?” Not a great look, BART Police. But official BART brass are trying to put a good face on their response.
“Chief Franklin has initiated department-wide training on cultural awareness, specific training about the Sikh faith, and additional biased-based policing training,” BART spokesperson Chris Filippi told the Chronicle. “BART PD’s response to this incident was immediate and Chief Franklin has sent a clear message that disrespectful or hateful speech of any type has no place at the BART Police Department.”
The Chronicle estimates that BART has three Sikh officers out of about 200 overall sworn officers.
The BART Police Officers Association similarly told offers to “exercise sound judgment when communicating digitally,” and also urged them to scrub their phones of “images, GIFs or memes” that “could potentially be considered a violation of our professional conduct policy if they were to be shared in a work-related context.”
So, cultural sensitivity training aside, the offending cop basically got a nice unscheduled paid vacation, and there will be no other consequence. The BART Police Department will just want this story to go away. And while it did just make it into the newspapers for one brief day, that may be the extent of the coverage of this latest, umpteenth text message scandal.
Image: BART Police Department via Facebook
