Crime & Law
New Law Puts Cook County Sheriff’s Police on the ‘L.’ Here’s How It Works
Most folks riding the CTA won’t witness a scene like this — a handful of officers from the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department going car to car while riding the “L.”
“We found that if we keep moving, we can actually hit all the cars,” Sgt. Frank Washington said. “... Officers that you’ll see are going back and forth, doing the same thing. Now, they do that because at each stop people get off, and other people get on. … It works, it’s very effective actually.”
This group of officers is focusing on the Green Line, riding from the Harlem and Lake station, over to Damen and back.
They’re led by Washington, who’s heard feedback from passengers and CTA staff that people feel safer with the law enforcement presence.
The officers are working under a new task force, headed by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
It was created by the state’s Northern Illinois Transit Authority Act that went into effect this year. Since March, the sheriff has placed teams of officers — 50 per day, working 12-hour shifts — on the Green and Red lines.
“We started going out into the public transportation routes, trains, buses, to see what the reality was,” Dart said. “We met with the bus drivers, the unions who represent them, the ones that represent the train drivers … to get a feel for what’s going on.”
The first big problem they found: fare evasion.
“We found that in numerous train stations, numerous ones, 80 to 90% of the people were not paying, so virtually everybody was going on for free,” Dart said. “There isn’t any personnel that was there to stop it. I’m happy to say once we put people up there, it’s now zero.”
Next, officers began keeping an eye out for other violations: smoking, drinking on the train, transferring between moving cars. The idea is that sweating the smaller details leads to a safer ride.
“We found 20 weapons on people, we arrested 250 people for a range of offenses,” Dart said. “We executed, I think, about 50, 60 warrants for people. We found 10 missing people, you know people who were in the system as missing persons, mostly juveniles, too, we were able to reunite with either family or whatever the structure was. We found 10 people not registered as sex offenders we were able to take into custody.”
The day WTTW News cameras rode along, within an hour, officers stopped a man for smoking, and learned he was facing warrants for failing to appear in court on charges of retail theft and possession of a controlled substance.
Dart’s office said the teams have lowered fare evasion alone by 85% on the Red Line. The office also said CTA’s statistics show that as of May, there’s been a 77% reduction in violent crime and a 50% reduction in overall crime compared to the same time frame last year.
There are also the train passengers who need a little extra help.
For that, people like Elizabeth Capua, clinical manager of the Treatment Response Team, are paired with officers to provide services for mental health, substance use disorder or homelessness.
“Sometimes it’s the only place that we might be able to reach them,” Capua said. “You know, you have a lot of individuals that are houseless, … that don’t have a place to stay, that are utilizing the train for warmth in the winter, for a space. You know, our shelters are overrun.”
Both officers and Treatment Response Team members added to their training to conduct their jobs in transit.
Now after 20 years in mental health, this is where Capua feels she’s finally seen movement.
“Of the times I’ve been part of the mental health system and working in it, this is the first time I feel like I’m actually helping people,” Capua said. “I’m not just a cog in the system, I’m making a difference. And that feels good.”
Dart will make recommendations to the Northern Illinois Transit Authority about how the task force has been going. The board will then decide whether to continue this program or whether a unified transit police force is necessary.
