Report: SUVs Driving Chicago Mayor Have Unpaid Speeding Tickets

Official SUVs driving Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) around the city reportedly got three speeding tickets and two warnings over a 14-month period.

Officials working in the city’s finance office told CWB Chicago that none of the fines had been paid as of July 22, the outlet said Monday.

Among the mayor’s SUVs was one with a red light ticket that had yet to be paid as well, the report continued:

There are also outstanding speed and red light tickets on two SUVs that used to be assigned to Lightfoot’s security team, according to city records. Records show one of those SUVs is now eligible to be booted and impounded due to a lack of payment.

In June, Lightfoot took part in discussions over putting the ticketing threshold back to 10 miles per hour, blasting City Council members thinking about voting to permit higher speeds near areas used by children.

“But Lightfoot’s concern for the children seems to come and go. Two of the speed violations that we found against her SUVs occurred in school zones with ‘school child present,’ according to the citations,” the CWB Chicago article said.

Surveillance footage appeared to show Lightfoot’s fleet of SUVs during the incidents:

Meanwhile, “Chicago reported more fatal traffic accidents in the first six months of 2022 than in any first six months since 2017,” the Illinois Policy Institute stated on July 18.

The news came after speed cameras issued more than one million tickets:

An Illinois Policy Institute investigation found 72 Chicagoans died in traffic collisions before July, 11 more than the previous record level reported for the first six months of 2021. March 2021 is when Mayor Lori Lightfoot lowered the ticketing threshold for city speed cameras to 6 mph over the limit in what she said was an effort to improve safety.

In addition, more than 60 individuals were shot, three fatally, over the weekend in Lightfoot’s Chicago.

Per the CWB Chicago report, the mayor’s office told the outlet in part, “Members of the Mayor’s Detail are trained in a variety of safety and security techniques to keep the Mayor safe and that includes both vehicles staying in formation while en route.”

The office added that as it is with citations incurred by officials or other agencies, there was an administrative process to determine if the vehicles were being used for safety reasons. The Department of Finance would say who was responsible for the incident, and would not collect payment until that time.