NATO Summit security forces will be using a secret communications center in suburban Chicago to help speed the response to any incidents that happen this weekend. More than three dozen agencies are preparing to move into the centralized location, with one goal: being ready for anything that might happen.
The Multi Agency Communication Center, or MACC goes on line at 2 p.m. Friday and will be staffed around the clock until all the NATO representatives have cleared out of town sometime Tuesday afternoon.
During that time senior officials from 43 different agencies including law enforcement, utilities and transit agencies will be on site and ready to respond to whatever. One critical aspect of keeping the city safe and responding to any emergencies during the Summit is communication between various federal state and local agencies and departments. If that breaks down, little problems can quickly become big ones, something the Secret Service and others very much want to avoid.
"I can stand up and yell, I need these five agencies or entities up here right now to discuss this issue, and they all come running up and we're all face to face right now, it doesn't take me five phone calls to talk to each one of them individually," said Roger Goodes of the Secret Service.
That will expedite the emergency response to things such as accidents that might tie up motorcades.
"We turn to the fire department and let them know if they need to send an ambulance there, and then you want the federal agencies to know, that's transporting delegates around that they may get stuck in the traffic," said Chicago Police Capt. Hootan Bahmandeji.
There will also be a lot of behind the scenes communication efforts that might be critical to intercepting and preventing problems.
"Our role is to gather and disseminate inteligence, that we may develop, that our law enforcement partners in other parts of the country, or overseas may develop, which would affect in some way, the NATO Summit," said Ross Rice of the Chicago FBI office.
The FBI says there are no known threats, but that's because troublemakers tend to be very clandestine.
"What we've found in the past is that individuals or groups intending to commit civil disobedience or criminal acts generally don't share that will the public and it's tightly held so that's what make our job challenging," Rice said.
