The Chicago Transit Authority can pat itself on the back — as it did just a few weeks ago — when it opens glistening new L stations and executes multibillion-dollar expansion plans.
Sure, the agency can build it — but who will come if potential passengers don’t believe the transit system is safe?
We were all reminded of that once again on Monday when four people were shot to death as they slept on a westbound CTA Blue Line train headed to the Forest Park Terminal.
Then, in an unrelated incident the same day, a 37-year-old man was stabbed multiple times and critically wounded during an argument on a Red Line train in Uptown.
It would be wrong to simply say the CTA attempted to make safety a priority. It has.
The agency will likely spend $68 million on security in 2025, up from $17.5 million in 2018. And the CTA last month said it is beefing up its transit surveillance camera network — already among the largest in the nation — by awarding a 12-month, $200,000 contract for a pilot program with ZeroEyes, a company that uses AI to detect and report when someone aboard a bus or train is brandishing a firearm.
Indeed, CTA cameras helped catch Rhanni Davis, 30, the suspect now charged with the Blue Line killings.
But with all those millions, and all that camera technology, private security personnel and Chicago Police Department assistance, the CTA still manages to fumble in creating a system in which riders feel truly safe. Crime on the CTA declined in 2023, but the decline was driven by a drop in robberies, while the numbers on other crimes have stayed the same or risen since the pandemic.
And if the Blue Line victims were homeless (three of them were shot while they slept, police say, something that is common among unhoused people on public transit), the shootings also point to the difficulties the city continues to have in adequately addressing the needs of unhoused people.
Shot ‘execution style’
In Monday’s horrific slayings, Davis, 30, has been charged with shooting three men and a woman. Police were notified of the shooting from a 911 caller around 5:30 a.m., after the train pulled into the Forest Park terminal on Desplaines Avenue in the western suburb.
“They were shot execution style as they slept,” Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins said.
But even with a suspect now facing charges, at least two looming questions have to be addressed.
Where were the private security officers — many of them armed and patrolling as canine units — on which the CTA spends millions to ride the system and protect its stations and passengers?
In addition, 300 unarmed security guards watch over the system each day, according to the CTA.
And where was the network of social workers and human services personnel the CTA and the city have tasked with getting unhoused people into safe shelter for the night, as opposed to riding buses and trains back and forth to keep out of the elements?
While we’re looking, where was CTA President Dorval Carter Jr.?
With such a terrible crime making headlines, Carter should have been right there with Hoskins and Forest Park Deputy Police Chief Ernest Chin outside the CTA terminal — his terminal — on Monday, publicly discussing the shooting and the response to it.
Instead, the embattled agency boss waited more than a day before finally speaking at a Tuesday evening news conference. Until then, he had only issued a written statement expressing condolences, an underwhelming response considering the shooting is the first CTA multiple homicide in decades.
Last month, the CTA signed an 18-month, $30.9 million contract with Action K-9, augmenting the agency’s current security contingent. The CTA says the company will supply up to 100 unarmed guards and 50 canines per day, plus supervisors and equipment.
Every bit helps. But how much depends on how well the CTA manages and coordinates all of its security apparatus.
Meanwhile, Mayor Brandon Johnson — who should’ve handed Carter a gold watch and pension papers a year ago — on Tuesday said he grieved “for the loss of these lives, but we’re gonna double down on our efforts to make sure that we build a better, stronger, safer society.”
Johnson and Carter must first build a better, stronger and safer CTA.
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