Martial Artists, Security Guards Set to Ward Off Crime on Chicago Red Line

Volunteer martial artists and security guards are set to patrol the Chicago Transit Authority redline Friday in an effort to deter crime in Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s city, which saw fourteen shootings, including one fatal shooting, from Friday into Sunday morning last weekend.

Activist Tio Hardiman, who created the group Violence Interrupters, told reporters Wednesday that ten unarmed volunteers will be hopping onto red line trains at 11:00 a.m., with volunteers being equally dispatched to northbound and southbound trains, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The guards and martial artists will be working an eight-hour shift.

Hardiman said that community groups have been forced to take action because of an uptick in transit crime. He also “called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Police Department to collaborate with volunteer patrols,” the Chicago Sun-Times noted.

According to the Sun-Times, Hardiman said:

We want to be proactive and preemptive. We don’t want things to get bad before we do something, things are already getting bad. Put yourself in the the [Sic] shoes of some working-class person, getting up to go to work and someone gets up in your face on the train.

A spokesman with the Chicago Police Department said that law enforcement does not want private citizens acting as vigilantes and urged community members to report crimes to authorities. 

Friday’s effort comes as Lightfoot’s crime-ridden Chicago saw fourteen shootings, including one that was fatal, last weekend from Friday into Sunday morning, as Breitbart News’s AWR Hawkins reported. Twenty-seven individuals were shot the previous weekend, including six fatally. The Chicago Tribune noted there were 145 homicides in the Windy City from January 1 through April 9 this year.

On April 10, officers discovered a married couple – Ocie Banks Sr., 79, and Sheila Banks, 61 – slain in a West Montrose Avenue apartment at a senior housing complex, as Breitbart News reported. Their son, Ocie Banks Jr., 33, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection to their shooting deaths. At the time, Banks Jr. was out on bond from another case in which the Justice Department alleges he robbed multiple cellphone stores while flashing a firearm in the city’s suburbs in 2020 and 2021, CWB said.

Last weekend, three bodies were recovered from the Chicago waterways, as Breitbart News reported, citing WLS-TV.

According to the outlet:

The Chicago Police Department said its marine unit recovered a body at about 9:00 a.m. on Sunday morning from Lake Michigan on the Near South Side. The unidentified man was found unresponsive and pronounced dead near the 3000 block of South Fort Dearborn Drive. Detectives are conducting a death investigation, pending autopsy results.

A woman’s body was discovered in the water around 11:40 a.m. in the 100 block of North Riverside Plaza in the city’s West Loop neighborhood, police said. The CPD Marine Unit pulled the body from the water and she was pronounced dead at the scene. About 30 minutes later, another female body was found unresponsive in the water in the 2800 block of South Eleanor Street in Bridgeport, police said. She was also pronounced dead at the scene.

The Cook County Coroner said the woman discovered in Bridgeport had been identified as 80-year-old Yuet Tsang.