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The Chicago Police Department Crime Prevention and Information Center (CPIC) and the Chicago Police Department Area 3 Detective Division are working to document and investigate the criminal acts that took place recently in the Central Business District in the early morning hours of August 10, 2020.

If your business or property was affected by the criminal actions and damage that occurred in the downtown area or if you have video footage or other useful information to share, below are the steps you can take to help aid the CPD’s investigations.

Steps to Submit Information:

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something.” For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Titan is taking the following steps to support our clients and staff members in the wake of the overnight looting that took place overnight into the morning of Monday, August 10:

In addition, Titan’s Managers including Senior Leadership team members are active and visiting sites to support staff and clients and our Titan Electronics Service Technicians are active and available to service any electronic security equipment that may have been impacted by recent activity.

The City of Chicago has announced temporary restrictions on access to the Central Business District between 8:00 pm – 6:00 am nightly until further notice including the following:

CTA

Rail Service will be impacted at the following locations:

CDOT Bridges

All Bridges will be up with the except for the following:

Access Points for Essential Workers:

Expressway Closures:

Lake Shore Drive will be closed between:

Retail Protection:

As of 11:00 am, Streets and Sanitation, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Water Management will have resources deployed for retail protection to 63 locations Citywide.

 Precautions to Take:

The Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) reminds private sector firms to ensure their street-facing cameras are in good working order and recording is enabled.

The OEMC Operation Center will be monitoring accordingly. However, because situations develop and change rapidly, additional attention to monitoring news media and other sources for rapidly developing events would be prudent.

Sign Up for Emergency Alert Program for Business

The City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) and Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC) has created an emergency alert program specifically for Chicago’s businesses. Local business owners and managers should text “CHIBIZ” to 67283 or visit www.chicago.gov/chibizalerts to opt-in to receive targeted emergency alerts for the business community via CHIBIZ Emergency Alerts. Businesses that opt-in will also be directed to submit a few business-specific details so that BACP and OEMC can send targeted alerts to specific areas of the city as needed.

Questions?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding security coverage or Titan’s Civil Disturbance Support, please contact your Titan representative or the Titan office at (312) 902-3400.  We will continue to communicate with you via email and at http://securechicago.com/posts/.

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something.” For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Dear Clients and Contacts:

The Chicago Fair Workweek Ordinance went into effect on Wednesday, July 1, 2020.  The ordinance requires employers in certain industries to provide workers with predictable work schedules so that employees can reasonably plan their income and lives.  The building services industry, which includes door staff and security services, is one of seven industries included in the ordinance.  Included industry employers must compensate employees for certain predictive scheduling violations and are subject to fines for failing to comply.  

What employee rights does the ordinance include?

In addition to advanced notice of work schedules, the ordinance requires:

Which employees are covered by the ordinance?

Workers are eligible if they are a Titan employee, not a contractor, and if they are not covered under a collective bargaining agreement (i.e., they are non-union). They must work 420 hours within an 18-month period and spend the majority of those hours working within the city of Chicago. They must earn less than or equal to $50,000 per year as a salaried employee or less than or equal to $26 per hour as an hourly employee.

What is Titan doing in response to the ordinance?

Titan is fully prepared to meet the obligations required for the newly enacted ordinance, including:

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this new ordinance or security coverage for your site, please contact your Titan representative or the Titan office at (312) 902-3400.  We will continue to communicate further updates via email and at http://securechicago.com/posts/.

Additional Resources:

The Chicago Fire Department recently lifted the moratorium on conducting in-person fire drills for high-rise office buildings. The fire drills will be required to follow social distancing guidelines set in place by the Chicago Department of Public Health, Illinois Department of Public Health, and the Centers for Disease Control. The current lower occupancy rates will assist property management teams in safely performing such.

Educational activities such as fire drills and life safety seminars play an essential role in informing tenants of guidance and best practices for critical emergencies. Titan provides a “virtual” Life Safety seminar that includes a customized approach to fire-safety awareness, guidelines for what to do during a fire emergency, who to contact when fire indicators are present, and what safety features are available in the building. We are here to help you provide a strong foundation of preparedness for your tenants in the unlikely situation of a fire taking place in your facility.  

Looking to Register your Building?

If you would like to register your building for a fire and safety seminar, contact Titan’s Director of Emergency Management, Tom Henkey at [email protected]. 

Titan Security Group would like to wish you a happy Independence Day for the 4th of July. Below are safety tips to help you prepare and enjoy the holiday with your friends and family this weekend.

Fireworks Safety Tips

Grilling Safety Tips

Water Safety Tips

Heat-related Safety Tips

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

As tenants and employees return to commercial sites for work. Building owners and managers are implementing new office procedures and protocols to promote social distancing and exposure prevention for the “new normal”. Now is an important time for property management professionals to consider how to handle emergency situations for maximum preparedness to their tenants and building sites.

Here are a few best practices to consider from the BOMA International – New Guidance Document: Emergency Evacuations Amid COVID-19. During this critical period it is imperative to evaluate and update your current evacuation procedures.

Tips to Consider for Emergency Preparedness

Train, Adapt, Train Again. Remember that everybody is a new to this situation. No matter how long you’ve been in the business, you’ve never dealt with recovering from a pandemic that impacted the entire country. We are all going to be learning new things, assessing the situation, and adjusting our response accordingly.

It is vital that frontline employees be given regular and helpful updates. Keep it simple when possible, focusing on what procedures or protocols remain the same, and which have changed.

Know Your Neighbors. Now is the time to get to know the property managers and security directors at the buildings next door and across the street. These informal networks can prove extremely valuable in the event of a secondary incident, and may building valuable long-term relationships with fellow professionals.

Imagine the fire alarm sounds at your site in the middle of a thunderstorm. Where are your going to evacuate your already nervous tenants? Having a neighboring building willing to offer their lobby as a temporary shelter and emergency assembly location could be priceless. Start the conversation.

Build That Stockpile. As the supply chain gets back on track, it allows us to begin rebuilding a stockpile of emergency supplies for your teams. This may include items such as bottled water, gloves, masks, or hand sanitizer. Slowly adding materials to internal stockpiles at your buildings will make you better prepared for any future incidents.

Distancing Under Duress. Remember that under best practices for coronavirus, social distancing is key. During a secondary crisis or emergency such as fire or flooding, it will be extremely difficult to maintain physical distance between building tenants and staff as they move away from a given threat.

Nevertheless, security and building personnel will be tasked with doing their best to re-establish order and assist this diverse population with dealing with two separate – and sometimes contradictory – hazards. Once tenants, guests, and staff are in a safer location, they will need to maintain six feet of separation whenever possible. This may require an area of shelter that is larger than might have been needed previously.

Call For Help. Even during such incidents, frontline employees must remember that they are not “on an island.” They should of course call 911 for assistance from first responders when needed.

Evacuation Drill Considerations

Compliance with state and local fire codes requires building personnel to have a fire safety and evacuation plan that follows International Fire Code (IFC) requirements.

For many commercial office buildings, evacuation drills must be conducted annually unless localities amend their code to a more frequent basis. If a building has ambulatory care facilities, educational (K-12) or institutional operations, evacuation drills may be required to take place on a monthly basis. Check with your local fire officials for further guidance on required drill frequency.

While it is important to plan for fire drills, it is even more important to be prepared if an actual fire emergency arises. Evacuating a building during a fire emergency needs to be the primary objective and social distancing should be considered a secondary concern. In those cases where evacuation protocols conflict with social distancing requirements, exiting the building during a fire emergency should be given priority. The following recommendations explore other ways to mitigate exposure to COVID-19 during an evacuation:

Questions?

Titan’s emergency planning services capabilities include the creation of a facility-specific, all-hazards emergency plan. Every one of our current emergency services clients has a core pandemic response guide included as a portion of their emergency operations plan document. Contact Titan’s Director of Emergency Management, Tom Henkey at [email protected] if we can provide additional insight or assistance.

Additional Resources

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Titan consistently maintains communication with our public sector partners to review active threats and resources.  The Chicago Police Department, Crime Prevention & Information Center (CPIC) issued the following in the latest Private Sector Situational Awareness Bulletin.

Situational Awareness and Security Preparedness

As the City of Chicago begins to enter framework for reopening, we are asking our Public/Private sector partners and faith-based community members to remain vigilant and aware of their surroundings and report any criminal or suspicious activity immediately to your local law enforcement agency.

Given the nature of mass gatherings, predicting who will attend and what their motivations will be is difficult and unreliable. It is possible that individuals unassociated with the group will imbed themselves to exploit the group’s emotions and/or incite acts of violence.

The following options for considerations are listed to assist the City of Chicago’s private sector in creating a safe and secure environment.

Options for Consideration

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Re: Titan’s Civil Disturbance Support

Dear Clients and Contacts:

As the City of Chicago, and surrounding areas continue to navigate through volatile protest activity, Titan Security remains positioned to support our clients during these challenging times. 

The protest activity that started on Friday, May 29, 2020 resulted in a series of events beyond the reasonable control of Titan including street closures, partial lockdowns, and suspension of public transportation through the Chicago Loop area.  In response to these events, Titan’s managers have taken extraordinary measures including but not limited to the items below, which may result in additional billing for our services during this time:

As we continue to prepare for ongoing protest activity, the safety of Titan’s employees, as well as the safety of our clients and their visitors, remains Titan’s top priority.  Titan’s Senior Leadership Team and our Safety Committee continues to work with our public sector partners to pivot our operations as necessary to support our clients and team members throughout these events.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding security coverage or Titan’s Civil Disturbance Support, please contact your Titan representative or the Titan office at (312) 902-3400.  We will continue to communicate with you via email and at http://securechicago.com/posts/.

Sincerely,

David Pack
President
Titan Security Group

Thoughts and Analysis by Tom Henkey
Director of Emergency Management, Titan Security Group

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has had an enormous impact on American businesses. The overall economy, and the private sector in particular, is resuming operations in fits and starts. This uncertainty has sent the stock market into an unprecedented state of whipsaw ups and downs.

Much has been written about the disease itself, about mitigation and containment efforts, and about where to find the most current information on the outbreak. There can be no question that we are still in midst of an extended coronavirus outbreak that is likely to include one or more additional waves of widespread illness.

And yet it is not too early in this crisis to begin considering what the recovery phase will entail. Like all disease outbreaks before it – even worldwide pandemics – this coronavirus will reach a peak before its impact begins to decline. That decline could be due to the virus going dormant, to new and more effective treatment of symptoms, or ultimately due to an effective vaccine. Or our society could simply learn to live with it, adapting to a new seasonal risk to public health with social distancing and other mitigation measures.

This much is clear: at some point, we’ll need to get back to some semblance of normal. Kids will return to schools and employees will return to work. Store shelves will be fully restocked and supply chains will realign.

But what will that “normalcy” look like? And how do we get there?

The recovery process begins long before such steps actually occur. It is born during preparedness and prevention phases, and during continuity planning efforts prior to any emergency, such as a disease outbreak. It continues through the mitigation and response phases of emergency management, gaining steam as stakeholders express a need and desire to resume full operations.

The recovery process truly begins with taking an honest assessment of current status and needs. This has already begun even while the response phase is ongoing, still very much in the midst of the crisis event. Yet it might be best thought of as an “exit strategy” for transitioning towards normalized business operations in a controlled manner. Even if an organization has lagged behind in making such preparations prior to an incident or disruption, much progress can be made even late in the game. A few considerations:

Finally, when it is time to go full-speed once again, you’ll likely require further assistance. Helpful federal resources include:

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) continuity planning
https://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-plan

https://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-planning-suite

Helpful professional organizations include:

Business Resumption Planners Association of Chicago
https://brpa.wildapricot.org/

Business Continuity Planners Association
https://www.bcpa.org/

Disaster Recovery Institute
https://drii.org/

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).

Thoughts and Analysis by Tom Henkey
Director of Emergency Management, Titan Security Group

Long-term and systemic disruptions of any kind are quite rare. Hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and wildfires can be devastating to surrounding communities, yet almost never negatively impact the entirety of the American economy. They are, instead, largely regional events with some national implications.

A communicable-disease pandemic has proven to be an exception. COVID-19 has made immediate and extensive impacts on our economy and on our social behaviors. Perhaps the only analogs we may envision are a large-scale bioterrorism attack, or a widespread and extended failure of the electrical grid.

Such massive disruptions must be addressed by prevention, preparedness, and mitigation. If they are allowed to take place, and we find ourselves in a largely reactive respond and recover mode, then we are acknowledging that such massive social and economic impacts are inevitable.

Author Michele Wucker coined the phrase “Gray Rhino” to refer to events such as pandemic disease. At its core, the concept is the opposite of the widely referenced “Black Swan” event – a disruption so unexpected and unpredictable that it remains essentially unforeseeable. A gray rhino is a different type of animal entirely. In her 2016 book of the same title, Wucker defined the term as “the big, obvious thing that’s coming at you.” It is the risk that is entirely predictable, but fails to be acted upon.

Such as a pandemic.

Public health experts have been warning society for literally decades that a widespread outbreak of communicable disease was a “when” and not an “if.” It was a gray rhino bearing down on us, yet getting very little attention in terms of planning or preparation. We got gored because we failed to be proactive.

And yet this collective mistake offers us all an opportunity to absorb several critical lessons learned, and to improve our prevention, preparedness, and mitigation efforts for the next time. Because there will be a next time. Some obvious takeaways:

Put a subject matter expert in charge. The RAE concept works. The person with the responsibility, authority, and expertise to make educated and actionable decisions is the person who should be in charge of the overall effort. For a pandemic, this points to a senior Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official, a highly regarded former Surgeon General, etc.

Establish a clear chain of command. The pandemic response in the U.S. showed us what a confused and ineffective mess our society becomes if no formal system is established to address a crisis. Aligning federal, military, state, local, and private-sector resources into a formal, efficient structure is vital to success.

Structured logistics and distribution. Perhaps the most important lesson from the coronavirus outbreak is that logistics are everything. The systemic lack of planning and structure that led to a chaotic and counterproductive bidding war among state and local governments and medical providers for critical supplies serves as a perfect example of how not to manage a supply chain.

Cross-sector collaboration is mandatory. Another obvious shortcoming in the preparedness for and initial response to this pandemic was a lack of collaboration. Involving unique and varied resources and skillsets including the private sector and military is absolutely mandatory for future crises. It is vital to have such agreements in place before a crisis emerges.

Fixed and reliable communications channels. During this pandemic, confusing and contradictory messaging from the federal government caused unnecessary inefficiencies and cost lives. The designated subject-matter expert placed in charge of the nation’s response must be the key conduit of concise, reliable, and truthful information during a period of crisis.

Identify the other rhinos. Just because you’ve tamed one beast doesn’t mean there are not others roaming around. We cannot afford tunnel vision. For example, hurricane season begins in the U.S. in less than two months, and climate change has created sea levels and weather patterns we simply have not seen before. We need to be proactive in our assessment and planning for predictable large-scale hazards in the future.

In essence, now is the time and place for unified, decisive, and innovative leadership across all sectors. A vital portion of that responsibility lies in performing an honest after-action review of our preparation for and response to the coronavirus pandemic, and rapidly applying the lessons learned to the next crisis. And there is always a next crisis.

As always, if you “See Something, Say Something”. For life-threatening emergencies, call 911. To report suspicious activity, call 855-RPRT-2-S4 (855-777-8274).