New Overtime Initiative?

The sheriffs are getting some money:

• The Chicago Transit Authority is deploying sheriff’s deputies on its trains, installing high-barrier entry gates to deter fare evasion, and starting “farecard inspection missions” after the agency’s federal funding was threatened.

  The CTA presented those changes in a revised security plan Tuesday to the Federal Transit Administration, which had been threatening to a cut a $50 million grant if the CTA did not revise its security plan to the FTA’s liking. The FTA has been pressuring the CTA to improve system safety since a woman was set on fire in November on a Blue Line train.

CPD gets some opportunities, too:

• The agency is committing to 75% more policing hours on its system. To do that, it is, among other things:
  

• Raising the policing hours of the Chicago Police Department’s public transit section by 34%. (The unit is staffed by 177 officers.)
• Doubling to 240 the number of off-duty officers who can sign up for extra hours patrolling the CTA. (That number already has been raised once. In December, it was boosted to 120 from 77.)
• Having Cook County sheriff’s deputies patrol the system’s rail lines at a combined rate of 4,400 hours per month. Neither the CTA nor the sheriff’s office would say how many officers it would take to meet those targets. The hourly number, however, is about 20% of what the police department’s transit section typically works, according to figures in CTA’s December response to the FTA.

So much for Conehead's promises to cut OT.