Purple Vests and Green Vests: The CTA's Safe Ride Specialists Are Riding the Blue, Green and Red Lines
The CTA's one-year pilot sends de-escalation specialists — not police — into the four highest-need areas of three rail lines, carrying Narcan and a mandate to connect riders in crisis with help. It arrives after a year in which two CTA employees were killed.
Riders on the Blue, Green and Red Lines may have started noticing new faces in brightly colored vests. The CTA is deploying teams of Safe Ride Specialists — intervention and de-escalation workers, not police officers — to provide mental health support, crisis intervention and immediate care resources, including Narcan, according to the agency's plan as reported by The DePaulia, DePaul University's student newspaper. The one-year pilot, starting in October, sends the specialists to monitor four areas of the three lines that the CTA says exhibit the 'highest need.'
The vests are the field guide. In purple, Crisis Intervention Specialists connect riders in crisis with treatment, housing and social services. In green, Community Violence Intervention Specialists work to de-escalate conflicts between young adult riders. Both teams work in coordination with first responders when a situation requires it, the CTA said, and in the pilot's first year the agency will track key metrics, including incidents successfully de-escalated without the use of law enforcement and reductions in service delays.
The program arrives in a hard year for the agency's own workforce. CTA janitor Julian Mobley was fatally stabbed at the Damen Green Line station on October 8, and in June CTA switch worker Kevin Barlow was shot and killed in an attempted carjacking near a South Side rail maintenance facility — the second killing of a CTA employee this year came as scrutiny of crime on the system was rising. The CTA said police presence has nearly doubled since Mobley's death, and the broader numbers are moving in the agency's favor: year-to-date homicides, shootings and robberies on the CTA are all down by about 50 percent from 2025, according to Chicago Police Department data cited in the reporting, with aggravated assault and battery also down, though criminal sexual assaults and arson are up.
