Le Journal

More police officers are making their presence known on CTA trains and platforms in a new program designed to deter crime, the CTA's boss said Thursday.Officers began patrolling platforms in groups of six to eight this week in the CTA's new Transit Rider Interaction Program, Acting Chicago Transit Authority President Nora Leerhsen said at a City Club of Chicago lunch.As part of the program, officers line a platform, check in with operators and riders, and take the train to other stations, where they will perform the same duties, Leerhsen said."This visible law enforcement presence will serve as a deterrent to crime, one of the key components of creating a safe environment on CTA," Leerhsen said.Leerhsen spent much of her 45-minute keynote touting her accomplishments during her nearly one year on the job. Leerhsen has been leading the agency in an interim capacity since former CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. resigned last January. Mayor Brandon Johnson has not named a permanent replacement.The past year has been busy for the CTA.The agency was saved from drastic service cuts and layoffs last fall when state legislators passed a $1.5 billion bailout for Chicago-area transit. The law shifts power from the CTA — like the ability to set fares — to the incoming Northern Illinois Transit Authority, which will replace the Regional Transportation Authority in June.And the CTA has been under increasing pressure to address transit safety, despite reported transit crime falling since after the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows a series of high profile crimes, including a horrific November attack on a Blue Line train, in which a man set a 26-year-old woman on fire.The Federal Transit Administration cited that attack when it demanded in December that the CTA improve its security plan or face federal funding.In response, Leerhsen said the agency was boosting its volunteer Chicago Police patrol by more than 40 officers a day. But the FTA blasted the plan as “materially deficient” and threatened to pull $50 million in funding. The FTA gave the CTA a March 19 deadline to submit a revised plan that addresses its concerns.Speaking with reporters after her speech, Leerhsen said the CTA plans to respond to the FTA by the March deadline but declined to elaborate on how the safety plan may be revised. She also declined to say whether the CTA has requested CPD increase the number of officers on its public transit unit, which is separate from the volunteer program that was increased in December. The unit had 133 officers as of December, according to the city’s Office of the Inspector General dashboard.The CTA has spent millions on private security guards and K9 units. But Chicago police officers play the primary enforcement role on the public transit system.It's security guards, not police officers, who expend the most manpower on the L, according to CTA's initial response letter to the FTA in January. Private security guards, who don't have arrest powers, worked an average of 65,000 hours monthly over the previous six months, according to the letter. By comparison, CPD officers in the public transportation section worked 21,000 hours, and officers in the volunteer unit worked 17,000 hours. Leerhsen said officers in the new Transit Rider Interaction Program come from both of the CPD volunteer and transit units.Illinois' new transit law, which goes into effect June 1, gives the incoming Northern Illinois Transit Authority board the power to make a systemwide police force, which could be set in motion next January.

As Illinois officials investigate whether a landlord and property manager prompted a massive federal immigration raid on their South Shore building, former residents and organizers say that’s what they’ve long suspected.Tenants had faced squalid conditions for years, long before the arrival of Venezuelan migrants in the building, and they said the property could be so unsecured at times that it felt open to the public and to squatters. Residents have accused the manager of failing to address complaints of disturbing conditions, and some suspected the owner and manager of calling the feds as a back door way of clearing the building.The Illinois Department of Human Rights announced late Wednesday that it would investigate the claims when it filed a formal housing discrimination charge against Wisconsin-based real estate investor Trinity Flood, her company 7500 Shore A LLC, and Strength in Management LLC, the property management company she hired at the South Shore building.WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times have previously reported observations from tenants and a map found in the building that detailed each unit, suggesting federal agents may have received inside information before the Sept. 30 raid.Jonah Karsh, with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, called the investigation “a big step” to getting justice for the tenants, who “have been through hell — between helicopters showing up on their roof, and then the remaining tenants having to leave on 2½ weeks notice in the cold.”Former resident Darren Hightower was glad to hear about the inquiry but was far less enthusiastic.“It’s never too late, I guess, but sometimes it feels like it’s too late,” he said. “Look where we are today: Some of the tenants from that building still don’t have a place to stay — myself included.”State officials said they would look into the allegation that the landlord and property manager “tipped federal officials” that Venezuelan nationals were living in the building without leases and had “threatened other tenants.”“7500 S Shore building management sought to intimidate and coerce the building's Black and Hispanic tenants into leaving their apartment units, based on stereotypes about Venezuelan immigrants,” the state complaint read.“Within hours after the raid, workers employed or contracted by 7500 S Shore building management were tossing tenants' belongings in the trash and clearing out units vacated by the raid.” Related Illinois probing whether landlord prompted immigration raid at South Shore apartment building Last remaining residents move out of troubled South Shore building raided by feds Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’ Signed by James Bennett, director of the state's human rights department, the housing discrimination charge alleges that the landlord and property manager “blamed Venezuelan tenants for their own failure to provide needed locks and security service, as well as other needed maintenance and repairs, and perpetuated stereotypes about Venezuelan gang members to send a message that tenants born outside of the United States were considered gang associates, even if they were law abiding."The charge document also states that building management unlawfully discriminated against longtime tenants when they refused to make maintenance and repairs.Flood didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.Reached by phone Thursday, Corey Oliver, the CEO of the Strength in Management property company, wouldn't answer questions about his next steps or whether he planned to cooperate with the investigation.“I have nothing to give you,” he said. “I can't tell you anything.”One resident previously told the Sun-Times and WBEZ that he saw someone he believed to be a worker from the building taking pictures of the units “where the Venezuelans lived” before the raid.WBEZ and Sun-Times reporters also found a crumpled map on a hallway floor days after the raid. It marked each unit inside the…