CTA hosts community safety workshop; public commenters offer a youth intervention pitch and raise DHS grant concerns

Acting President Norliff and Carrie Bader, vice president of strategy and innovation, summarized a transit community safety workshop held in late August that brought CTA staff, union partners, mental-health and social-service organizations, public-safety agencies and peer transit agencies together to inform pilot designs for a Safe Ride Ambassador program and related security initiatives.

Bader said more than 50 external participants and about 25 CTA staff attended the half-day workshop. The goals, she said, were "safety through presence, partnership, and people," and participants worked through real-world scenarios such as disruptive behavior, mental-health crises and riders who altered travel patterns because they feel unsafe. Bader summarized peer-agency lessons emphasizing small pilots, empathetic engagement, de-escalation training and clear coordination with police and contract security. "Common themes ... were that each of our peers started small and really took multiple years to develop these programs," she said.

Bader and Norliff said next steps include publishing a summary report of the workshop, finalizing pilot partnership scopes and developing pilot designs that may focus either on crisis intervention or on community violence interruption and prosocial engagement.

Public comments at the board meeting reflected community concern about safety and related policy choices. Felicia Peterson, who identified herself as founder of a nonprofit focused on violence prevention and youth work, urged CTA to support an after-hours community-engagement program on the Red Line that would deploy life coaches, case managers and mental-health professionals during overnight hours. "We want to save, heal, and help, and empower the youth that are on our trains," Peterson said.

A second public commenter, Nick Hunder, raised a different concern about federal grant terms. He said the Department of Homeland Security updated its award terms and that CTA is slated to receive DHS Transit Security Grant Program funds (the DHS notice of funding opportunity cited an estimated CTA award of about $7.6 million). Hunder warned the board that the updated terms require recipients to share records and potentially provide access that could be used to support immigration enforcement, and he urged the agency not to accept the DHS award. Hunder said similar grant conditions have affected other transit agencies and urged CTA to consider community impacts before accepting the funds.

Why it matters: The safety workshop represents CTA's effort to build cross-sector partnerships and community-informed pilot designs intended to reduce incidents and improve perceived safety on transit. Public comments underscored both community-driven program ideas (after-hours youth outreach) and civil-liberty concerns about accepting certain federal security grants.