Chicago City Wire

The refusal by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to support law enforcement is partly to blame for skyrocketing crime on Chicago's public transit, said Dan Proft, co-host of Chicago's Morning Answer radio program.

"They depopulated the police," Proft said. "So they got rid of 2,000 police officers in the city, and  then they passed the SAFE-T Act. The chanters and the looters did less damage than your elected  officials: Your mayor, your governor."

Over the weekend, a 29-year-old man was shot multiple times and killed on a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Red Line train on 79th Street, NBC reported. No suspects have been taken into custody.  As of mid-July, there had been 488 violent crimes reported on the CTA in 2022, which is more than any other time period since 2011, the story said. Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said that they will increase the number of officers on CTA.

Lori Elaine | avvo.com

On the afternoon of June 26, two men boarded a CTA bus at Chicago and Pulaski and shot a 17-year-old boy to death and wounded another passenger, ABC Chicago reported. The bus driver jumped out through his window to escape harm. 

"Right now, no operator, no train person feels safe coming to work," said Keith Hill, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241. "The attacks are up, the assaults are up, now we've got a murder on a bus." 

Hill said it's not a CTA problem, it's a city problem.

As of June 21, there had been 391 violent crimes, including assaults, batteries and homicides, reported on the CTA so far in 2022, representing a 37% increase from the same time period last year.

On June 15, a man was shot to death at the entrance to a Red Line station in Chatham, CBS News reported.

"A lot of people don't feel safe coming to their jobs, and then we have issues from that with absenteeism and things of that nature … they're afraid," Eric Dixon, president of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 308, said. 

Dixon said that despite promises from the mayor's office and the police department of more security on the CTA, there hasn't been any change.

SafeWise's annual 2022 State of Safety survey found that only 42% of Illinois residents report feeling safe, while 64% reported feeling "high daily concern" for their safety. Thirteen percent of respondents reported experiencing gun violence firsthand, an increase from 8% the previous year. Mass shooting incidents in Illinois increased by 25% from 2020 to 2021.

There have been 379 murders, 1,598 shooting incidents, 1,184 criminal sexual assaults, 4,707 robberies, 3,354 aggravated  batteries, 4,229 burglaries, 10,584 thefts and 8,077 motor vehicle  thefts reported in Chicago in 2022 as of July 31, according to data from the Chicago Police Department.