In Chicago, on just one evening this week, there were three people injured and one person killed in multiple shootings. Sadly, that wasn’t a big enough number to make the headlines outside of the Windy City because it’s really just a typical night out on the town. An increasing amount of criticism has been leveled against the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) because the trains and buses have become some of the most dangerous places to be, particularly after dark. Now, as CBS Chicago reports, the CTA is answering the call for action. But their latest response has been to announce that they will be deploying 300 unarmed guards to ride the lines and monitor the stations. CBS is perhaps overly polite when they ask the obvious question. Will that be enough?
Robberies, stabbings, and shootings are among the violent attacks that have been reported in the CTA system within just the last month.
Is the answer to fight these crimes bringing in unarmed security guards? The city thinks so.
As CBS 2’s Jermont Terry reported, CTA riders say they feel like they’re watching their backs – whether on buses or trains – and the Chicago Transit Authority expects those security guards to watch out for all issues.
Over the first three months of 2022, crimes on Chicago trains are up 40% over the same period last year and more than 55% over the first three months of 2018, so you can’t blame this on the pandemic. Carjackings are also through the roof, possibly leading to more people riding the trains, which is unfortunate given this recent news.
Almost all of this crime is being driven by gang violence in Chicago. They are well armed with illegal weapons and seem to have very little fear of repercussions for their crimes. People are being robbed, assaulted and killed in broad daylight. (We’ll have some video at the end of this article to demonstrate just how bad it’s gotten.)
The CTA says that these 300 unarmed “security guards” will be “flooding the trains and buses.” They are all being trained in “de-escalation and conflict resolution.” They have apparently learned nothing from other cities where the “defund the police” movement drove policy changes that reduced the number of police and put in place these “community intervention” specialists because of supposed racism in law enforcement outcomes. In Baltimore alone, three of these “de-escalation” specialists have been killed on the streets in the past 18 months and many others were injured.
If your plan is to station someone with a clipboard on a train and ask them to intervene when some gang banger pulls out a gun, good luck to you. We’ve seen this movie before and it doesn’t end well. The citizens of Chicago and all the rest of our cities deserve the right to travel in safety on public transportation and that means having real police officers on hand who are armed and ready to answer force with more force. That gang banger with a gun on the train that I described above will stop and think twice if there’s an armed cop in the same car with him. A clipboard is unlikely to slow him down.
If you really want to understand why things have gone so badly in Chicago and other cities, along with the government policies that led to all of this mayhem, including a horrifying video of a gang execution in broad daylight, watch this segment from Tucker Carlson. If you don’t want the entire analysis, fast forward to the 13:55 mark. Assume a disturbing content warning for extremely graphic violence. This is happening on the streets of Chicago virtually every day.