The Chicago Transit Authority will improve the variety of cops patrolling metropolis’s public transit system Friday following a risk from President Donald Trump’s administration that the mass transit company may lose federal funding if it didn’t take sure steps to handle violent crime.
The Federal Transit Administration threatened final week to withhold federal funding from the CTA if it didn’t adjust to the calls for of a “particular directive,” together with by upping safety on town’s bus and rail programs. In unveiling the particular directive, the Trump administration invoked the November assault on 26-year-old Bethany MaGee, who was doused with gasoline and lit on hearth in an apparently random assault whereas driving on the CTA Blue Line.
President Donald Trump’s administration threatens CTA funding over issues of safety
The FTA gave the CTA a decent timeline to adjust to the calls for of the Dec. 8 directive, saying it needed to submit a “safety enhancement plan” inside every week and implement it by Dec. 19, which is Friday.
In a information launch Thursday, the CTA and the Chicago Police Division stated they’d enhance the variety of police taking part within the “Voluntary Particular Employment Program” on the CTA from a mean of 77 per day to 120 per day. Members in that program are CPD officers who signal as much as patrol the CTA on their days off, the companies stated. They complement CPD’s public transportation part and district cops.
Ok-9 safety staffing, for which the CTA contracts privately, may also see a rise from a mean of 172 canine safety guards per day to 188 per day.
CTA and CPD will work collectively to “strategically deploy” the extra safety “based mostly on mixed crime knowledge and CTA system data,” the CTA stated.
“We count on the extra police and Ok-9 presence on our system to additional improve safety visibility,” the transit company’s performing president, Nora Leerhsen, stated in a press release.
“CPD and CTA work carefully collectively daily to maintain CTA riders protected, and this surge is an extension of that effort,” police Superintendent Larry Snelling stated, additionally in a press release.
CTA spokesperson Catherine Hosinski stated the surge was anticipated to value about $3.5 million over the yr — cash she stated was coated by the company’s 2026 funds.
The FTA didn’t instantly reply to a query about whether or not the safety plan would fulfill officers and stop the CTA from shedding federal funding. Final week’s directive was not the primary time the Trump administration, which has repeatedly used violence on public transit as a political cudgel in opposition to blue cities, had threatened to withhold funds from the CTA.
Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote a letter in September to the CTA asking it to put out plans to scale back crime and fare evasion on the system or danger shedding funding. The Trump administration has made comparable threats to mass transit companies within the Democratic-led cities of New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, D.C.
Leerhsen defended the company’s security practices in a response to Duffy on the time.
The Trump administration has additionally frozen $2.1 billion for the CTA’s deliberate Pink Line Extension and its Pink and Purple modernization undertaking, though it did so citing the company’s range practices in contracting, not issues of safety.
