(The Center Square) – Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says crime is down on Chicago-area public transit, but the people in charge owe taxpayers, workers and riders a lot more.
Dart recently spoke at the City Club of Chicago and said state lawmakers asked him to spearhead the reinvention of public transit’s security and safety component.
The sheriff said a preliminary report is due to the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority board by December.
“We really, really, really owe the taxpayers, my God, the employees of public transportation and the passengers of it, we owe them a lot more,” Dart said.
Dart said public transit crimes are down for the fifth month in a row.
State Sen. Ram Villivalam, D-Chicago, sponsored the $1.5 billion transit funding bill signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last December.
Villivalam said lawmakers would continue discussing ways to improve on safety until there are zero incidents.
“It’s not very useful for me to tell someone that experienced an issue of safety on public transit the data is trending in the right direction,” Villivalam told The Center Square.
Dart said he started deploying officers on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line in March.
The sheriff said, in addition to recovering 27 weapons, his officers prevented widespread fare evasion at train stops.
“It was just incredible. There was different stations where 80%, 85% of the people were not paying all the time, so the dollar figure is stunning,” Dart said.
The CTA’s enhanced enforcement effort followed a threat by the Federal Transit Administration to withhold up to $50 million in funding unless the agency submitted a more aggressive security enhancement plan.
In addition to having Cook County Sheriff’s Police on rail lines, the plan promised more hours from the Chicago Police Department’s Public Transit Section and double the number of off-duty officers on transit patrol.
