Chicago Transit Authority increases security, but violent crime continues

The attack by a gunman on four people sleeping on the Blue Line last Monday came during a difficult week for the Chicago Transit Authority and highlighted the challenges the city and transit agencies face in combating violent crime rates that remain persistently higher than pre-pandemic levels.

The likelihood of being a victim of a violent crime on the “L” remained lower through the first six months of 2024 than peaks seen in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but a Chicago Tribune analysis shows that reported transit crime has remained stubbornly above pre-pandemic levels. And reports of gun crimes such as shootings, armed robberies or attempted armed robberies, while relatively rare, have also remained stubbornly high compared to the past decade.

The CTA has increased spending on security services in recent years, nearly tripling its security services budget from $23.9 million in 2022 to $65.2 million for 2024. According to CTA filings, this year's budget would be the highest amount allocated for security since at least 2018, and already in the first half of the year, spending was $12.4 million over budget.

The amount also includes spending on contracts with police officers from several suburbs and Chicago, as well as private security firms to provide unarmed guards, according to CTA budget documents.

The CTA awarded a contract worth up to $30.5 million to politically connected security firm Monterrey and one worth up to $40.5 million to Inter-Con Security in 2022, documents show. More than 400 unarmed guards now patrol the system. Later that year, the agency also awarded a shorter contract worth up to $41.7 million to Action K-9 Security for canine units, but a new contract is currently being negotiated.

The CTA attributed the spending jumps starting in 2022 in documents to a new agreement with Chicago police and an increase in private security guards and K-9 teams, as well as expected pay increases. The CTA has increased funding for a program that provides volunteer, off-duty officers for CTA patrols, transit officials said.

The Chicago Police Department's Public Transportation Division also patrols the system free of charge, and police work in other capacities to ensure CTA safety.

Other security measures implemented by the CTA include more than 33,000 cameras on its buses and trains. The agency also recently began testing an AI-based gun detection program at train stations. However, the program is not used on trains and only detects drawn weapons.

The measures are part of the CTA's efforts to combat crime and the perception of crime as it tries to bring ridership back from pandemic-related lows. But the unarmed guards and technology were not enough to prevent the Blue Line killings in Forest Park, which raised questions among some state politicians about safety and the CTA's spending on public transit. Nor were they enough to prevent other acts of violence this week, including the shooting of a CTA worker outside Howard Station the next day.

“There is no easy solution and it doesn't always depend on how much money you spend, but it depends on effectiveness,” said House Representative Eva-Dina Delgado, a Chicago Democrat who formerly worked for the CTA and supports legislative efforts to reform the transit administration.

“Every person will feel differently depending on what they are experiencing, so having a police presence at a station may be worth working overtime,” she later added. “But there may be other options that are not as expensive that could help change that feeling.”

Monday's quadruple homicide, near the end of the Blue Line in Forest Park, occurred around 5:30 a.m. Prosecutors have said Rhanni Davis, who is charged with murder, is seen on surveillance video walking up to three sleeping people and shooting them before walking to another car and shooting a fourth person.

After the shooting, Davis boarded a Blue Line train heading toward the Loop and later transferred to the Pink Line, prosecutors said. Chicago police officers alerted to the shooting arrested Davis at the California Pink Line stop around 7 a.m. Monday.

One of those killed was 28-year-old Simeon Bihesi. The Cook County coroner's office identified two of the other victims as Margaret Miller, 64, and Adrian Collins, 60. A fourth person, a 52-year-old man, had not been identified as of Friday.

Hours later, around 1:15 p.m., a 37-year-old man was stabbed by a man on the Red Line near Wilson Station following a verbal argument. The injured person exited the train in Wilson and was taken to the hospital in critical condition, police said.

The following night, an on-duty CTA switchman was injured in a drive-by shooting outside Howard Station shortly before 9:15 p.m., CTA officials and police said.

A week earlier, a 32-year-old man was electrocuted on a power line. The Cook County coroner's office ruled the death a homicide, but few details were available about the circumstances.

The Blue Line shooting raised questions for Gov. JB Pritzker and state Sen. Ram Villivalam, a Chicago Democrat who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, as the Illinois General Assembly continues to consider what mass transit in the region might look like in the future. Among other things, it is considering whether the CTA should merge with Metra and Pace into a single agency and how to handle the mass transit budget crisis expected when federal pandemic aid runs out, which could be in early 2026.

A day after the shooting, Pritzker said the “bigger question” of why the CTA is not adequately secure needs to be addressed. Villivalam questioned how the region's transit agencies spend their money on security, whether it works, and whether it can be done more holistically and better coordinated across the region.

“There is no doubt that even if the plans to improve and expand services are properly presented, it will be impossible for the Illinois General Assembly to vote for funding until people are safe and feel safe,” he said Tuesday.

Those comments came after the CTA was praised by other state lawmakers for its reliable service and the cleanliness of the trains and stations the agency provided during the Democratic National Convention, which put Chicago in the national spotlight and was a test for the agency and its controversial president, Dorval Carter.

But crime and the perception of crime have been a major concern in recent years. Reported violent crimes on trains spiked as the pandemic caused many riders to be kicked off the CTA. Although the number has since dropped, it is still above pre-pandemic levels.

By June 2024, there were about 5.1 violent crimes per million trips, comparable to the same period in 2023 but significantly more than in pre-pandemic years. For example, in the first half of 2019, 2.5 violent crimes were reported per million trips, a Tribune analysis of CTA ridership and city crime data shows.

The absolute number of violent crimes has increased so far this year, from 284 by June 2023 to 310 in 2024. However, as passenger numbers also increased, the probability of becoming a victim of a violent crime on a given trip remained comparable.

The analysis only includes crimes that are considered serious enough to be reported to the FBI as “index” crimes. Violent crimes include robberies, murders and serious assaults.

Crimes involving firearms, such as shootings and armed robberies, have seen similar trends. The most common types of gun crimes on CTA trains are armed robberies and attempted armed robberies, with 39 reported through the end of August. More armed robberies and attempted robberies have been reported so far this year than in any other year in the past decade, except for 2022, when the number rose to 60.

The analyses focused on crimes reported in the city of Chicago, which covers most of the CTA system but does not include the Forest Park shooting.

While a visible police presence can help prevent some crimes, it is costly and cannot cover every train and station, said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, who studies public transit safety. Cameras are especially helpful for identifying a suspect after a crime, but are often not an effective deterrent because they are so ubiquitous that people don't even notice them, she said.

“Transit is such an open environment that it is much more difficult to protect than, for example, airports,” she said.

Crime, particularly gun crime, on public transit is part of a larger nationwide problem, but one potentially effective option is to implement measures to preventively detect weapons, Loukaitou-Sideris said. However, such measures tend to be expensive, can cause delays in passengers boarding and are not feasible everywhere, she said.

However, crimes such as robberies and assaults can sometimes be prevented by measures such as bright lighting and eliminating nooks and crannies, she said.

In a statement, CTA officials said the agency has “invested more in security measures than ever before” in the past decade.

“Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to combat crime on a transit system as extensive as the CTA – it requires a multi-pronged approach to both prevent criminal incidents and assist local law enforcement in investigating crimes that do occur,” the statement said. “The CTA's investments in security are designed to support local law enforcement efforts.”

For its part, the Chicago Police Department referred in a statement to both the public transportation unit that oversees the CTA and a strategic decision support center connected to the CTA's security cameras, where police track incidents in real time and relay information to officers on the scene.

Delgado, the state representative, said it's often about how safe passengers feel on the train, regardless of whether that feeling is related to recent crimes. Ensuring safety should be a broader approach that involves more agencies and has a regional focus that doesn't stop at Chicago's city limits, she said.

“CTA needs partners to meet this public safety challenge,” she said.

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(Jeremy Gorner of the Chicago Tribune contributed.)

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