Chicago police are making a push to hold criminals accountable on the CTA, combining resources and dedicating additional officers to beats.
According to the department, dedicated detectives are now investigating cases that would once be spread among two or three police districts.
“It’s important that we now have detectives assigned to public transportation,” said Commander Joe Bird, who heads the public transportation section. “They pick up the pattern a lot faster than we did before.”
One example highlighted by police involved a series of armed robberies on the Blue Line Nov. 17 and Dec. 7 of 2023. Detective Ray Verta was assigned to the case.
He said that the victims were targeted for their cell phones.
“Once the phones were given to the people, the bad guys would order them to open up their cell phones so that they could gain access to all of their apps,” Verta said.
In some cases, the offenders were ale to gain access to shopping apps and order goods to be sent to their own houses.
Verta said his first victim was able to pass along tracking data from the phone that showed its exact physical location. Using that data, along with videos and still images gathered from the 33,000 cameras spread across the CTA’s network, he was able to close in on the thieves.
“They asked me if i had a picture of the bad guys,” Verta said. “I showed it to them and they knew who they all were."
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here.
In all, two juveniles were arrested and charged with the CTA thefts.
“We are going to follow up,” Bird said. “We are going to work that case as hard as we can and we want someone to be charged for those offenses.”
Bird said CPD works hand in hand with the CTA’s own security teams. The key to making charges stick is the video.
“The video is so helpful when we present this case to the States Attorney for approval,” he said.
