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VOLUME 1 - ISSUE 2 / March 2007

Message from the president

On February 1, 2007, Tricon Security formed a Teaming Agreement with Excalibur Services LLC, a public entity located in Charleston, West Virginia. Excalibur Services is a service disabled veteran owned business, a small disadvantaged business, and is located in a Hub-Zone. With Excalibur as the lead company Tricon Security has the ability to bid on Federal Government contracts, utilizing the designation “service disabled veteran owned business”. There are currently 134 defense contractors doing business with the Federal Government, and all 134 have sourcing requirements designated for service disabled veteran owned businesses. I am very excited about this strategic alliance with Excalibur Services LLC.

Recently Tricon Security was awarded a contract to provide uniformed security services to Integrated Manufacturing and Assembly (IMA) located in Brownstown, Michigan. Tricon is currently providing uniformed security services to a sister company of IMA, CL Automotive, located in Highland Park, Michigan. Both companies are owned by Mr. Jim Comer, former President, Lear Corporation. I would like to congratulate the Tricon Security personnel at CL Automotive for their outstanding efforts in providing a safe and secure environment for the employees, visitors, and guests of CL Automotive: Kevin Armstead – Operations Manager, Major Gibson and Cawana Kemp – Shift Superviors, Kenneth Elam, Dorsey Hadden, and Lawrence Moore shift officers.

Reginald Ball
President and CEO,
Tricon Security Group

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Anti-Fraud Services a $900 Million Industry

Anti-fraud credit-monitoring services offered by banks, direct marketers, and credit bureaus such as Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have turned the fear of identity theft into a $900 million industry that is expanding by at least 20 percent every year. "Identity theft has essentially become a business-- not just for bad guys but for good guys, too," said privacy consultant Robert Gellman. "A lot of the people that are involved in profiting legally from identity theft are direct participants in the whole credit system that doesn't have the protections in place to prevent identity theft in the first place." More than 12 million Americans subscribe to these services, which alert the consumer whenever a lender requests their credit file and cost anywhere from $3 to $16 a month. Though credit monitoring can provide a consumer with peace of mind, it often fails to protect against identity theft cases wherein a fraudster uses another person's social security number in conjunction with their own name. Additionally, zero liability policies and federal laws granting consumers access to one free credit report a year from the three biggest credit card bureaus allow consumers to obtain the same information at no cost.

Source: New York Times (12/12/06) P. A1 ; Dash, Eric

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Giving Police Powers to Private Security May Solve Crime Problems

Private security guards have outnumbered police officers since the 1980s, predating the heightened concern about security brought on by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. What is new is that police forces are increasingly turning to private companies for help, the Washington Post reports.

Private-sector security is expanding into arenas once reserved solely for official law enforcement, such as complex criminal investigations and patrols of downtown districts and residential neighborhoods.

The more than 1 million contract security officers, and an equal number of guards estimated to work directly for U.S. corporations, dwarf the nearly 700,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States. For example, Wackenhut Corp. guards the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and screens visitors to the Statue of Liberty.

"You can see the public police becoming like the public health system," Thomas M. Seamon, a former deputy police commissioner for Philadelphia who is president of Hallcrest Systems Inc., a security consultant, tells the newspaper. "It's basically, the government provides a certain base level, if you want more than that you pay for it yourself."

In one of the country's most ambitious collaborations, the Minneapolis Police Department three years ago started a project called "SafeZone" with private security officers downtown, estimated to outnumber the police there 13 to 1. Target Corp. and other local companies paid for a wireless video camera system in downtown office buildings that is shared with the police. The police department created a shared radio frequency. So far, the department has trained 600 security officers on elements of an arrest, how to write incident reports and how to testify in court.

Source: Access Control & Security Systems 1/9/07

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Surveillance Cameras' Latest Job: Interpret the Threats They See

Surveillance cameras are increasingly becoming a part of public life, and they are becoming smarter, too. The dawn of the "intelligent video" era is on the horizon, as security companies and researchers are creating algorithm-based camera systems capable of intelligently interpreting the scenes they are monitoring. For example, some cameras under development could eventually uncover suspicious behavior just by analyzing the way a person walks. Other cameras would be capable of determining a person's height or identifying unattended bags in airports. Casinos already use cameras that can detect known gamblers who cheat, and a camera network in Baltimore is capable of taking pictures of vandals and people who engage in illegal dumping, even interacting with them via a recorded message. As camera systems become more intelligent, ideally this would mean that fewer people would be needed to monitor video surveillance screens. Intelligent surveillance cameras can be programmed to look for things that are out of the ordinary--for example, a camera system monitoring a store parking lot can be programmed to focus on people loitering in the parking lot instead of those who enter the store directly.

Source: Boston Globe (02/26/07)

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