The installation of fences around McCormick Place began early Wednesday morning. The fencing is high enough that scaling the fences is nearly impossible.
The fencing will be set up around the inner security perimeter which consists of Lake Michigan to Indiana Avenue, east to west, and 21st Street to 25th Streets, north to south.
For the full news broadcast from ABC7, please view below.
An Occupy Wall Street offshoot is sponsoring buses to bring protesters to Chicago for the NATO summit.
These protesters plan on surrounding the Boeing headquarters building on May 21st. The hope of the protesters is to shut the building down for the day.
Also, the Adler Planetarium, Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium will all be closed on Sunday, May 20th. Management for all 3 of the museums have also considered closing Saturday and Monday as well.
The exclusionary zone for the NATO summit will include a 13 x 13 city block area downtown and the South side. The perimeter for this zone will be Roosevelt Road to the north, 31st Street to the south, Lake Shore Drive to the east, and the Dan Ryan to the west.
Within the exclusionary zone, there will be stepped up patrols, parking restrictions, and rolling road closures. Cermak Road will also have a vehicle ban between Indiana Avenue and Michigan Avenue. Pedestrians will still have access to the hard perimeter around McCormick Place.
For the full story from ABC7, please view below.
Metra, South Shore, and Amtrak trains will run during the NATO summit. However, these trains may not remain on schedule.
The U.S. Secret Service has issued a statement that says “Passengers should plan for some delays as trains approach and pass through the McCormick Place stop due to security measures”.
For the full video from ABC7, please see below.
The CANG8 committee has requested the date change of their protest from May 19 to May 20. The City of Chicago has not approved this change yet.
For the full news video from ABC, please see below.
Police officials are in the process of discussing how many officers will be needed, whether or not reinforcements will be needed, and if reinforcements are needed where they will come from.
Illinois has in place the Illinois law enforcement alarm system, which is also known as ILEAS. ILEAS was formed after the 9/11 attacks and consists of hundreds of law enforcement officials from about 900 local governments. The officers train to handle terrorist attacks and civil emergencies. ILEAS is split into regions across the state. Region 4 is composed of Cook, DuPage, and Lake counties.
A Region 4 official has said that they will not be assisting with the G8/NATO Summits. The departments close to the city are concerned about threats to their own suburbs. Additionally, Chicago does not provide any indemnification to protect officers or their departments and the city does not share federal urban security funds with the suburbs.
For the full report from ABC7, please click here.
On February 15th, a panel sponsored by CoreNet Global spoke to downtown property managers and other professionals. The panel included Gary McCarthy, Chicago Police Superintendent, Frank Benedetto, US Secret Service Special Agent-in-Charge, and Gary Schenkel, Executive Director- of OMEC.
The main concentration of this panel is that there are things that downtown businesses and properties should be concerned about but there should not be fear. There should be emergency plans in place such as evacuation plans in case they are needed.
The panel answered questions which answers included:
For the full article from the Chicago Tribune, please click here. Below is the news report from ABC7 Chicago.
On Friday, February 3, 2012, several police departments in the United States including New York, Salt Lake City, Boston, and Syracuse along with Greece’s law enforcement websites were hacked by a protest group named Anonymous. Police department websites in the Chicagoland area were not affected by this hacking. However, this same protest group is calling for protesters to come to Chicago for the entire month of May.
Due to the secrecy of who is behind the Anonymous protest group, police are having difficulty tracking who is behind the cyber attacks and protest organization. Police do know that the individuals in charge of Anonymous have extensive experience with large protest demonstrations, such as anti-war demonstration in Chicago on Lake Shore Drive, and have not been peaceful at previous summits.
For the full article from ABC7, please click here.