City wants St. Patrick’s Day Parade security info

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Marianne Coakley pushes a baby buggy, the only float in the South Side Irish Parade, down Western Avenue. Coakley was one of the original founders of the parade in 1979. | Supplied photo

Updated: March 13, 2012 10:34AM

Chicago officials are pressing organizers of the South Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade for details of the security they’ll deploy for the March 11 event.

Also being called for is a public meeting to outline security plans.

Parade committee members have been meeting regularly with representatives of city departments — including police, streets and sanitation, and cultural affairs-special events — to hammer out parade details. They last met Jan. 31 and are set to meet again Tuesday.

A Feb. 6 letter from the city asks that during the upcoming meeting, “specific deployment plans” for private security forces be laid out. It also suggests that a public meeting “be scheduled as soon as possible” to let residents hear about the security plans.

Joe Connelly, the parade committee’s chairman, wouldn’t say Friday whether he supports such a meeting.

“We’ll have to see what Tuesday’s meeting (with the city) brings,” he said.

The parade committee has said it will spend $80,000 to hire Safety Service Systems, which provides security at Bears games and other high-profile events. Although the group has a letter of intent to hire the firm, called S3, it doesn’t yet have a written contract, according to a spokesman for the parade committee.

Organizers have said S3 will augment Chicago police and will enforce a “zero-tolerance policy” toward open containers of alcohol along the parade route.

The letter from the city’s cultural affairs and special events department also asks for specifics about how the parade committee will publicize that policy to parade attendees before and during the event.

Connelly said last week that the parade committee has raised more than half of the $200,000 it estimates is needed to cover parade costs. He said he is waiting to hear from the city what the parade will be charged for city-provided services such as street barricades and post-parade cleanup. Those costs, organizers said, have to be paid in advance.

While it has gotten local businesses and corporate sponsors to help defray parade costs, the committee is holding a fundraiser Feb. 18 at 115 Bourbon Street, 3359 W. 115th St. in Merrionette Park.