Public-Private Partnership Helps Shield City

Public and private sector security partners gathered at the Toronto Police College to share information on how to collectively keep the city safe at Toronto Shield’s third National Security and Counter-Terrorism Symposium.

Chief Myron Demkiw underlined the importance of giving security partners the tools to keep the city safe.

“Global Shield represents the partnership that has to exist between the police and the private sector to ensure we can all deliver together on the safety and protection that our city needs,” said Demkiw, recognized the worldwide framework of the security network. “During this time of global tensions and increased extremism, it’s important for us to work with increased collaboration with our partners to make sure we’re responding to the threat environment that we face in Toronto in the most effective way we can together.”

Toronto Shield is an information-sharing partnership between executive-level public and private professionals and the Toronto Police Service to promote awareness for emerging and evolving situations within Toronto related to emergency preparedness and security.

Toronto’s program is part of the Global Shield Network of 45 law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide.

Chief Demkiw said the Service has made new efforts to prevent and respond to critical and complex incidents, including establishing the Counter-Terrorism Security Unit (CTSU).

CTSU Superintendent Stefan Prentice said harnessing the public and private security professionals strengthens the city.

“Because we have this shared mission of public safety, we have to have a common operating picture, so we share with them some of our intelligence products where we can, some sensitive information we have to hold back, but we give them as much information as we can because we want them to understand the current threat environment in the way we see it so we can play our roles within the framework of public safety,” Prentice said.

He said the 100-plus security professionals represented at the College have the ability to make a huge contribution to keeping the city safe.

“They have a lot of training, a lot of experience and there are so many people in this room that are experts in their fields, so they understand public safety and security,” he said.

The partnership also creates intelligence for the police service.

“They understand how to add value to the police, what kind information to give to us at what time and how to escalate it. We want to make sure they have clear conduits to us to provide us with that information so we can respond accordingly.”

Toronto Blue Jays Vice President of Stadium Operations and Security Mario Coutinho said the Fusion Centre concept between the public and private sector is very much ingrained in the work of his organization and Toronto Shield has only strengthened that partnership throughout the city.

“The documentation, the regular communication has improved and increased, and I think that’s really what we want to see – knowing what’s happening locally and internationally helps us develop our plans,” said Coutinho. “We like to share information and build our partnership. Being a downtown-centric location where the property line is lliterally our door, we have to work with our neighbors and with all city services to create a baseline plan that can be expanded as necessary for higher risk events.”