Anthony Riccio, Director of Public Safety
Summer is the time for families and friends to come together and celebrate outside.
That means large crowds that may gather in a city park or the tight confines of a downtown street.
From the NATO/G8 Summit to Chicago Bears games, Lollapalooza to Notre Dame football, Monterrey Security has been trusted to protect world leaders and crowds of more than 100,000 people, often in confined settings.
Our leadership team brings decades of experience in working with our partners to develop crowd management plans specific to their events. Public safety is paramount at these gatherings and strategic plans to ensure that are developed long before the event begins.
“There needs to be a lot of pre-event planning with organizers and other public safety agencies,” said Anthony Riccio, Monterrey Security’s Director of Public Safety. “It’s also important to know who will be attending the event. Is it a protest where people will be throwing things? A football game between two rivals? A country music festival? Is it an event with seats against a stage or is it a general admission event where people may rush the stage? Knowing the event itself and the crowd it will draw is important to the pre-planning and coordination with other agencies.”
As the former First Deputy Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, Riccio has extensive experience in developing and implementing strategic security plans for major events, including those attended by high-profile dignitaries.
Monterrey Security was founded in 1999 on a foundation that the best protection comes through prevention – a belief that continues to serve as our foundation today and what drives our approach to crowd management.
“Crowd management is about getting people moving, keeping a flow, avoiding chokepoints when there’s 70,000 people in one place – particularly when everyone is leaving at the same time – and identifying those things in advance and how we can manage them,” Riccio said.
Monterrey Security’s tailored services at large events include entry screening, executive protection, ticket scanning, guest services, perimeter operations, vehicle escorts and inspections, VIP hospitality and disaster response, among others. Beyond being trusted because of our experience in those areas, our partners know they can count on each of our employees to come into an event fully prepared.
“Security staff have to be well trained and well versed not just in the security plan, but in the facility itself,” Riccio said. “We also make sure we have the right number of staff – if you’re short staffed, you wind up with crowd management problems.”
Event preparation also includes planning for the potential for the worst scenarios – severe weather, medical emergencies, violence, a bomb threat or even an active shooter – all of which is driven by a security plan that includes strong communication protocols.
“Having real-time communication helps you identify developing problems and can help nip it in the bud before it evolves,” Riccio said. “We have people watching on cameras and also mixed in the crowd to get a sense of anything going on. We also make sure we have well-trained staff at the event who are highly visible and who people know they can come to for help.”