News/Commentary

Chicago answers the call for more protection on public transportation – bring in the unarmed ‘security guards’

April 23, 2022 | | Print Article

Violent crime in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Windy City has become a topic of national debate in recent years, and in response to a slew of attacks aboard Chicago’s trains and buses, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is bringing on board 300 security guards, ostensibly to protect the riders — but there’s one small problem: the guards will be unarmed, leaving many to wonder if 300 will be enough.

As CBS 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.”

With crime on the CTA up 40 percent this year, riders-turned-victims, such as Mimi Sarne, who was attacked in early January, say the CTA has failed to handle the situation.

“Whatever they’re doing, the CTA — it’s not working,” Sarne said.

But instead of weapons, the guards that are to be deployed are receiving “de-escalation and conflict resolution” training.

Keith Hill, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 41, thinks the CTA is training the wrong people.

“If there’s anybody they should be teaching de-escalation training to, it’s their own operators,” Hill said.

The CTA’s move to send in guards came days after U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) penned a letter in which they stated, “more needs to be done to protect CTA’s frontline workers and passengers given the alarming increase in crime on the CTA system.”

Hill, reports CBS, “still wants armed officers.”

“This is a world-class city; a world-class transit, and they deserve better,” Hill said.

According to Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw, the alarming uptick in crime is unlikely to be slowed by unarmed guards.

“Almost all of this crime is being driven by gang violence in Chicago,” Shaw writes. “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.”

The de-escalation training, says Shaw, shows the CTA has “learned nothing” from the failures of other cities.

“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,” Shaw writes. “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,” says Shaw, “good luck to you.”

Tucker Carlson discussed the devastating consequences that come with the erosion of the rule of law during his Fox News show this week and slammed Mayor Lori Lightfoot for prioritizing “ideology over human life.”

“Now if tragedies like this happened occasionally, you would call these accidents. … But these are not accidents,”  Carlson stated. “This is happening every day in the city of Chicago.”

Melissa Fine
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