Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus drivers and rail operators marched down Michigan Avenue in Chicago on Saturday protesting the violence in the city, of which many transit workers have become victims.
At least 100 CTA representatives and their families participated in the demonstration, The Chicago Tribune reports. Union leaders organized the event.
The group marched to the site where a CTA bus driver was attacked and beaten on December 4. The marchers blocked the street for a few minutes in recognition of this driver. A short distance from that location, another CTA driver was shot in the jaw in September. In November, a driver was stabbed while confronting a thief.
The president of the rail operators union, Eric Dixon, told the Tribune his members are tired of feeling unsafe at work.
Keith Hill, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, which represents bus drivers, told the newspaper, “Enough is enough.”
Several bus drivers told CBS News reporter Marissa Parra that they live in fear when going to their job each day.
The CTA office does not acknowledge attacks are skyrocketing, CBS News reports. For tracking, the office reports only those assaults that result in hospitalization.
“CTA only counts if it’s a hospital visit,” Hill told CBS. “We count everything.”
“We are tired of being attacked on the bus” CTA driver Rashida Tramble said. “We are tired of CTA not listening to us.”
“They’re punched, they’re spit on, urine thrown on them,” Clem Balanoff told CBS. “It’s outrageous.”
“The last few months have been the worst violence,” Hill told WGN. “The violence is getting more and more.”
Bail reform in Illinois now allows criminals to go free shortly after being arrested.
A woman who stabbed a CTA worker in the neck was charged with a misdemeanor and given probation, American Thinker reports. That same woman, Quinton Joiner, was arrested again for using a knife to steal a woman’s purse while on probation for the CTA stabbing. Joiner was released from custody again in seven hours. Joiner then left Chicago for Tampa, Florida, where she stabbed two women and threatened a third. She remains in custody in Florida, charged with three felonies.
Chicago appears to be descending into anarchy and gang rule, writes Thomas Lifson for American Thinker. Chicago and San Francisco seem to be competing for least lawful place, with each creating an environment in which honest citizens are afraid to leave their homes, writes Lifson.
“The details of Joiner’s attacks are blood-curdling, if you care to read about them,” Lifson writes. “Imagine the Chicago courts letting someone like that roam the streets. Lucky for Chicagoans that she decamped for a jurisdiction that actually functions properly.”
