CTA suffers most violent attacks in 24 years as Trump threatens $50 million funding cut over crime

Aggravated assaults and batteries on the Chicago Transit Authority reached at least a 24-year high in 2025 as the Trump administration threatened to cut millions of dollars in funding after a series of jarring attacks.

The upward trend has continued into 2026, with those crimes climbing 33% over the same period last year, according to city data dating back to 2001.

It's bad news for the CTA and its interim leader, Nora Leerhsen, who's trying to highlight positive crime trends on the transit system and secure $50 million in grant funding from the federal government.

Unsatisfied with the CTA’s decision in December to boost the number of officers patrolling Chicago’s trains and buses, the Federal Transit Administration has threatened to withhold the money if the CTA doesn't enact an acceptable safety plan by mid-March.

The CTA has touted an overall drop in crime, due in part to falling reports of robberies and thefts. But the record number of felony assaults and batteries underscores the work still needed to improve the CTA's image and appease the feds.

The perception of transit safety was tarnished further in November, when 26-year-old Bethany MaGee was set ablaze on a Blue Line train in the Loop — an attack that drew the ire of President Donald Trump.

Federal prosecutors have charged Lawrence Reed with terrorism, but the Chicago Police Department logged the crime as an aggravated battery.

Crimes are considered "aggravated" when a perpetrator uses a weapon or causes serious injury, and they can be prosecuted as felonies. That’s in contrast to "simple" batteries and assaults, which are misdemeanors.

Leerhsen has said she's taking security seriously and working with the police to address concerns.

“When I speak with riders and employees, [safety] is the issue raised most,” Leerhsen told the City Club of Chicago in January. “As a daily rider — and I've been on the system over 500 times just in 2025, and as a woman and a mother who often rides with her two young children — it's personal to me.

"While overall crime is down, we can't and won't stop doing so much more.”

‘A big change’

Attacks on the CTA rose last year, even as those crimes fell 15% citywide between 2024 and 2025 — the largest drop in a decade.

The police department recorded 469 aggravated assaults and batteries on the CTA last year, above the 441 reported in 2024, city data shows. A new record for those crimes has been set every year since 2021.

“It’s definitely a big change,” said David Olson, co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice Research at Loyola University Chicago, who has analyzed the jump in aggravated batteries and assaults on CTA trains, platforms and buses.

Olson said the rate of violent crime on transit remains statistically low. Most aggravated batteries and assaults in Chicago happen outside of public transit, and those crimes often involve people who know each other, he said.

His analysis found that more CTA-related aggravated batteries and assaults are happening in the Loop, accounting for around 16% in 2025, compared to about 5% of those crimes in 2009.

The train stops that had the most aggravated attacks in 2025 were Clark/Lake and the Red Line stops at 63rd and Lake streets. More than half of the attacks happened on trains and buses.

Transit crime numbers may be fodder for the Trump administration's attempts to bully Chicago officials, but Olson said it's important to consider that most of these crimes are not random.

“Every crime is not what you see on TV,” Olson said. “Every violent crime is not a murder of a police officer. And every crime on the CTA does not involve someone lit on fire. That's a challenge for the public. ... There are different forms of battery and assault.”

Federal funding threat

When federal transportation officials threatened last December to withhold grant money over safety concerns, the CTA responded by adding more cops and police dogs to patrol the transit system in December.

Leerhsen said a volunteer unit of officers working overtime transit shifts had increased more than 55%, to at least 120 officers on an average day.

But the Federal Transit Administration said that wasn’t enough. The agency has now given the CTA until March 19 to propose a revised safety plan or risk losing the $50 million in funding.

Since then, Leerhsen credited bulked up police patrols on the Red and Blue lines in the past year — and accompanying decreases in reported crimes and customer complaints on those lines. She has also touted a significant increase in transit-related tickets and more overall police visibility on trains and platforms.

The CTA claimed the increased patrols have contributed to an 8.5% drop in overall crime compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, rail crime has fallen 10%, and violent crime on the bus system has dropped 23%.

The police department said overall arrests on the transit system increased last year, even as the number of officers assigned to the two transit units fell. Staffing numbers for those units reported by the city’s inspector general’s office don’t account for the cops volunteering to work overtime.

The department said officers work with the CTA “to address public safety concerns as they arise and implement proactive efforts to reduce crime and restore a sense of safety to ridership.”

That includes upgrading a high-tech command center last year and including officers from its robbery task force to quickly relay information to other cops.

Mayor Brandon Johnson won’t say how he wants transit security to change.

Instead, a mayoral spokesman said Johnson takes safety concerns seriously as the city continues to implement a “holistic response” centered on mental health services and homelessness outreach.

‘Our job is deterrence’

Community activist Tio Hardiman has been leading a group of Violence Interrupters on Red Line trains since 2022 to prevent transit crimes.

Hardiman said assaults and batteries are usually crimes of opportunity or the result of arguments with no one to mediate.

He said his volunteers have prevented 15 potential attacks on Red Line trains since November. “Our job is deterrence,” he noted.

But he said there’s also a need for “a community outreach component on the train,” similar to the approach Mayor Johnson has championed. A security presence can only do so much, Hardiman acknowledged.

“The reality is that the people who break the law on the trains are not scared of the police," he said.