Inaugural 5K for Missing Children Comes to Chicago on October 15, Hosted by @pscchicago

On the morning of October 15, 2016, families throughout the Chicagoland area will come together at DuSable Harbor to support the serious and relevant issues of child abduction and exploitation through Chicago’s first annual 5K for Missing Children. According to the FBI, over 450,000 reports of missing children were entered into the National Crime Information database in 2015 alone.

The National Center of Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is an organization that assists in finding missing and exploited children with law enforcement, families, and the professionals that serve them with the cases. One hundred percent of the net proceeds from the 5K for Missing Children will be donated to the NCMEC.

The 5K for Missing Children, hosted by Premier Security, consists of a 5K run and walk, kid’s dash, face painting, bounce house, IDing booth, post race party and more. The IDing booth will offer complimentary ID kits. All participants of the 5K and the Kid’s Dash will receive a finisher’s medal, a participant race tech t-shirt, as well as many other great giveaways. The race will commence at 8:30 a.m. at DuSable Harbor and Kid’s Dash starts at 10:00 a.m.

Premier Security expanded their partnership with NCMEC this year to provide training to all of their over 1,000 employees in recognizing, responding to and reporting incidents involving children who have been abducted or those at risk of being abducted

“As a company, we appreciate the partnership we have formed with NCMEC. It is humbling and heartbreaking to understand the mission of NCMEC,” said Premier Security CEO James C. Taff. “We feel it is not only our duty as Chicagoans and security professionals, but as parents, aunts, uncles and a community, to help protect children everywhere.  We’re hopeful that this event will help families educate themselves on how to stay safe and, in doing so, promote NCMEC’s admirable mission.”

The event is made possible by the efforts from many sponsors including John Hancock Real Estate, Fleet Feet Sports, Apex3 Security, Apex3 Systems, Wells Fargo, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, Mesirow Financial, Kuty & Associates, LLC, Paperless Proposal, RXBar, Jiobit, The Protection Group, and Revolution Brewing. The efforts of sponsors, families, and supporters combined will help the 5K For Missing Children take steps to a make Chicago a safer city.

Registration is $35 for adults and children 10-years-old and younger are free. To register or to learn more about Premier Security’s 5K For Missing Children please visit www.5kforMissingChildren.com.

Premier Security is a fully licensed and insured corporation that provides professional uniformed security services throughout the Chicago area and suburbs. Premier Security provides their clients with dynamic security solutions and partners they can count on. For more information visit www.premiersecuritycorp.com.

Established in 1984, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® is the leading nonprofit organization in the U.S. working with law enforcement, families and the professionals who serve them on issues related to missing and sexually exploited children. As part of its Congressional authorization, NCMEC has created a unique public and private partnership to build a coordinated, national response to the problem of missing and sexually exploited children, establish a missing children hotline and serve as the national clearinghouse for information related to these issues. For more information visit www.missingkids.com.

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American Mafia: Chicago: True Stories Of Families Who Made Windy City History

Everyone knows stories about the American Mafia and its varied forms of crime, from racketeering to stock manipulation to murder.  American Mafia: Chicago explores the Windy City, strolling through its neighborhoods and imagining scenes from the past—telling the stories of the men, women, and families and revealing the events behind the legends and the history of the families' beginnings and founding members.

Featuring the most fascinating stories from the early days, when loosely-organized, incredibly secretive gangs terrorized neighborhoods with names like Little Hell, through the mob’s headiest years, when Al Capone and his men pretty well controlled the city, American Mafia: Chicago: True Stories Of Families Who Made Windy City History, offers tantalizing glimpses into the era when Chicago was ruled by gangs with their ever-twisting allegiances and tangled webs of relationships.

Most of the buildings are gone now. But the stories are still there, if you know where to look.

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Have You Been Indicted Or Convicted? Are You Going To Prison? This Is What You Have To Know!

Federal Prison & Federal Prison Camp a Beginner's Guidebook for First Time Inmates.

Have You Been Indicted Or Convicted? Are You Going To Prison? This Is What You Have To Know, When You Have To Go!

Steve Vincent is considered by many to be America's Premier Federal Prison Consultant. Steve has helped hundreds of people prepare for Federal Prison and Federal Prison Camp with his professional, unique and caring program that is designed to do one thing, get you prepared for prison without scaring or embarrassing you. Steve teaches what you need to know in order to stay safe during your period of incarceration with a positive message that places emphases on you surviving, improving yourself during the time and realizing that you will be going home. While no two prisons are exactly the same, and regardless if it's federal or state, or if you are a man or woman, the day-to-day life of their inmates is quite similar. Steve's guidebook can help you to better understand just what you will be facing at a low security institution or camp.

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Tokyo Joe: The Man Who Brought Down the Chicago Mob (Mafia o Utta Otoko)

The yakuza, Japan's homegrown mobsters, are favorites of local filmmakers but not documentarians, for reasons entirely understandable. A documentary that seeks to delve into the inner workings of the Yamaguchi-gumi might find an audience, but the hurdles to making it, such as scouting subjects willing to dish openly (and possibly suicidally) on camera, would be formidable. Better to make another TV-friendly program on tuna fishermen.

Documentarian Ken'ichi Oguri, backed by uber-producers Kazuyoshi Okuyama and Chihiro Kameyama, has finessed this difficulty by focusing his new film, "Tokyo Joe: The Man Who Brought Down the Chicago Mob (Mafia o Utta Otoko)," on Ken Eto — a Japanese-American FBI informant who put 15 Chicago mobsters and mob associates behind bars in the 1980s.

Chicago Mobster Ken Eto AKA Tokyo Joe

Eto was no ordinary snitch. Born in California in 1919 and raised by a harshly disciplinarian father, Eto was a wild, scrappy and highly intelligent kid. He found his true metier in a World War II detention camp, where he fleeced fellow detainees in poker games. After the war, he settled in Chicago, where he honed his skills in card sharping while insinuating himself into the mob-run gambling business.

In 1983, Mafia capo Vincent Solano feared that Eto, recently busted for running a massive numbers operation and out on bail, was going to spill to the cops. He ordered a hit, carried out by two henchmen, who drilled three bullets into Eto's skull in a parked car. Incredibly, Eto survived, and, while recovering in the hospital, decided that Solano's betrayal trumped his loyalty to his Mafia bosses. He entered the FBI's witness protection program and spent the next several years giving testimony that delivered a body blow to the Chicago mob.

Oguri tells this story through interviews, mostly notably with Elaine Smith, the former FBI agent who put Eto behind bars (and later wrote a book about him), Jeremy Margolis, the former federal prosecutor who persuaded Eto to turn snitch, and Steven Eto, Eto's son by his second wife.

These talking heads are fascinating characters in their own right. Smith, who joined the Bureau at the late age of 34 when it was still a mostly male preserve, comes across as a salty, wised-up type, spinning anecdote after engaging anecdote about Eto, his case and the ways of the Chicago mob. Of more than 1,000 victims of mob hits, she claims, Eto was the only one to survive. Steven Eto pungently humanizes his father, who ran numbers out of a coffee shop near home and once memorably told his young son, "If you bring a weapon to a fight, be prepared to kill the guy, because if you don't, you'll have an enemy for the rest of your life."

Eto himself appears only fleetingly on the screen, being badgered by the media after his arrest and testifying as a witness for the prosecution, but he is a riveting presence whose hooded eyes see all but tell nothing. Oguri's film about his exploits is, for anyone interested in Mafia lore, pure manna from wise-guy heaven.

Thanks to Mark Schilling

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Creation of a Tri-national Force Addressing Organized Crime

The presidents of El Salvador, Salvador Sanchez Cerén; Guatemala, Jimmy Morales; and Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez; and the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, met at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. on September 23, 2016 to follow up on progress in addressing regional  migration, security, governance, and economic challenges within the framework of the Northern Triangle governments’ Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity and the United States Strategy for Engagement in Central America, with the goal of reducing incentives that drive irregular migration.  The leaders also participated in a dialogue with the private sector and a broader audience of stakeholders on Central America, to discuss innovative activities in the areas of infrastructure, logistics, and energy.

The governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the United States reaffirmed their commitments enshrined in the Blair House Communique on February 24, 2016.  One such example has been the establishment of consultative groups in each country to provide oversight of the Plan, with participation of the public and private sectors, and of civil society.  The dialogue between the leaders was based on the commitments established during the January 14, February 24, and May 3, 2016 meetings that defined specific objectives with regard to security, governance, and prosperity in the region, including efforts to promote safe, legal, and orderly migration that include public messaging campaigns to combat irregular migration and provide comprehensive assistance to returned migrants.

In their remarks, the Northern Triangle presidents highlighted the progress each government has made, and emphasized the actions undertaken at a regional level, such as the trade and customs integration process, the establishment of a Regional Plan for Combatting Organized Crime, the creation of a Tri-national Force addressing organized crime, and the integration of investigations and information systems related to gangs, with efforts coordinated by public prosecutors.

Additionally, they highlighted progress and accomplishments at the national level:

In El Salvador, in the wake of the government’s efforts to improve security, homicides have dropped approximately 50 percent since the beginning of the year.  El Salvador has also aggressively targeted the financial networks of transnational criminal organizations.  Operation Jaque resulted in the July arrest of 78 individuals and the seizure of real estate properties, 178 vehicles, and over 600 bank accounts.  In addition, the government has established public-private dialogues on economic growth, security, and education.  These discussions have helped develop specific proposals such as the Plan Safe El Salvador and the approval of reforms to promote private investment.  Currently, the President is leading a dialogue on taxation with the main political parties.  In the fight against corruption, the Secretariat of Transparency and Anti-Corruption presented more than 150 cases of alleged corruption in public administration to the Attorney General’s Office.  The Attorney General’s Office has received support from the Executive, including additional funding to hire more assistant prosecutors.

Guatemala has significantly increased tax collection through judicial and administrative measures, and has adopted new methods to combat tax evasion and contraband.  The government continues to fight corruption and strengthen the Public Prosecutor’s office.  In the area of security, as a result of the strengthening and modernization of the National Civilian Police, there has been a decrease in the homicide rate, continued efforts to dismantle criminal organizations, and a record number of drug seizures.  The government recently presented an urban development policy to promote job creation and improve standards of living.  To strengthen coordination and alignment actions of the Plan, the government’s Consultative Body agreed to implement a pilot plan in three municipalities.

In Honduras, notable achievements include the implementation of the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (known by its Spanish acronym MACCIH) and a sustained increase in tax revenue, projected to be 17.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2016.  In addition, there has been unprecedented progress by the Special Commission for the Clean-Up and Transformation of the National Police, which has removed 40 percent of Honduran police officers and referred information on their cases to the judicial system.  Honduras also continues with capacity building of the National Police and the dismantling of human trafficking and smuggling organizations, as well as ongoing efforts against extortion.  The government, together with the private sector, launched the Honduras 20/20 program to strengthen the priority productive sectors of the national economy, fostering job creation for its citizens.  The ongoing implementation of the Better Life program combats poverty throughout the country.

The leaders expressed their appreciation to Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank, for his support to the Alliance for Prosperity Plan from its inception.  They also expressed their appreciation to the Foreign Ministers of Mexico, Colombia, and Chile for their participation in the meeting.

The three presidents also recognized the efforts by the United States Congress to allocate resources for the Strategy.  They also recognized Vice President Biden for his commitment to the Plan on behalf of the Obama Administration.

Finally, the four leaders agreed to the establishment of the United States-Northern Triangle High Level Dialogue that will further the efforts to promote a secure, stable, and prosperous Central America.

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