IL: CTA defends safety practices after feds threaten funding

The CTA defended its commitment to safety in a letter to federal transportation officials sent after President Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation threatened to withhold the agency’s federal funding.
Oct. 14, 2025
3 min read

The CTA defended its commitment to safety in a letter to federal transportation officials sent after President Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation threatened to withhold the agency’s federal funding.

“We recognize that it is absolutely critical that we remain laser-focused on providing a safe and secure ride for everyone on our system,” acting CTA President Nora Leerhsen wrote in an Oct. 3 letter to Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy. “We share your focus on this important issue.”

Duffy wrote a letter to the CTA in September asking the agency to lay out its plans to reduce crime and fare evasion on the system — or risk losing federal funding.

“I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter to avoid further consequences, up to and including redirecting or withholding funding,” Duffy wrote.

The threat came as the Trump administration has doubled down on rhetoric about crime in Democratic-led cities as a political cudgel, including in Chicago, where crime is down, as it is nationwide. Duffy sent a similar letter to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston last month, and had previously written to the heads of New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.’s mass transit systems.

After Duffy’s September letter, the Trump White House did in fact freeze $2.1 billion in federal grant funding already awarded to the CTA, mostly for its long-awaited Red Line Extension project — but it did so citing the agency’s diversity requirements for contractors, not crime.

The CTA maintains that it’s committed to finishing the Red Line Extension, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he was considering legal action over the funding freeze.

Meanwhile, Leerhsen defended the agency’s safety practices in her letter to Duffy, which the Tribune obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. Systemwide, she said, crime on the CTA was down 12% over 2022 levels.

On the Blue Line, Leerhsen claimed, crime has dropped 30% over last year and on the Red Line, it has dropped 14%.

Crime data analyzed by the Tribune showed that there were seven homicides and eight shootings on the CTA between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, this year, down from nine homicides and 14 shootings during the same time period in 2022.

Robberies dropped from 414 to 364 and thefts decreased from 725 in 2022 to 560 in 2025 for the first nine months of each year. The number of criminal sexual assaults logged on CTA property increased by one during the two reporting periods in 2022 and 2025.

Leerhsen laid out the transit agency’s various crime-fighting initiatives, including its use of an AI-gun detection technology called ZeroEyes and the opening of a new strategic support center this summer in collaboration with Chicago police.

“With access to CTA’s vast network of cameras across the transit system, and to city of Chicago street cameras, CPD officers assigned to the (strategic support center) monitor and track active and ongoing incidents, as well as assist detectives in identifying and locating offenders that commit crimes on the public transit system,” Leerhsen wrote.

Leerhsen also said that as of the beginning of September, Chicago police had issued about 3,200 citations for smoking and 2,200 for fare evasion on the CTA.

And per Duffy’s request, she laid out a list of security-related federal grants the CTA had received or been awarded.

The list included a $15.7 million counterterrorism grant from the Department of Homeland Security that could require cooperation with federal immigration enforcement actions.

When asked about the grant earlier this month, the CTA would not say whether or not it planned to accept it.

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