Have K-9 patrols been successful in reducing crime on the CTA?
CHICAGO (CBS) -- It will soon be six weeks since the Chicago Transit Authority deployed K-9 teams across its trains.
By the CTA's own admission, crime and unruly behavior has been on the rise this year. So how has the new tactic been working, and how much is your safety going to cost?
As CBS 2's Lauren Victory reported Thursday, the highly-trained dogs are mostly monitoring the Red and Blue lines, which run 24 hours and on which the CTA has seen the most crime.
The dogs are out 24 hours a day, but we don't know exactly which stations the K-9 teams are patrolling. The CTA will not tell us specifics for safety reasons.
We did, however, learn the full scope of the cost for this level of security.
If it seems like you have seen fewer crimes and related problems on the CTA in the news lately, you are right. A CBS 2 analysis of violent crimes on trains, platforms, and stations found 51 cases in September.
This is compared to 60 violent crimes in August, 60 also in July, 67 in June, 53 in May, and 59 in April.
Have Chicagoans just been behaving better in the past month, or can the new four-legged guards take some credit?
The dogs have been on the clock since Sept. 2. They are tasked with patrolling and surveillance.
A total of 50 dogs and 100 handlers from Action K-9 Security should be out in full force by the end of October.
The company website boasts that their K-9s are ""able to pinpoint a problem quicker than a security officer alone" because of better hearing and smelling abilities.
Those heightened senses come with a hefty bill. Nearly two months after our public records request, we received a copy of the CTA's contract with Action K-9 Security.
The CTA budgeted as much as $1.7 million a month for the service, which includes unarmed guards, supervisors, dogs, and equipment.
That is a huge jump from what the CTA paid the same company just a few years ago.
We added up the invoices paid to Action K-9 Security over six years from 2013 to 2019, and calculated an average monthly cross of about $272,000 – about a sixth of what the CTA could be coughing up now.
Is it all worth it?
A kennel manager who answered the phone at Action K-9 Security proudly told us one of their dogs, and a guard, is better than three to six officers. The company said they have "had zero crimes at their stations" so far.
We are not able to verify that claim of zero crime, because neither the kennel manager nor the CTA would reveal which stations the K-9 teams patrol.
CBS 2 asked the CTA why the cost for the K-9 teams could hit so much higher this time around. We are told the security guard rates basically doubled, and the CTA contracted for more than two times the resources.