SOS! The State of Security

December 20, 2019.

Things You Can Do

The Tenant Association is trying to get a town hall style meeting with CAPREIT management so you can all come and tell them what you think about the security cuts here. We will keep you posted on this.

We still need you to report security incidents to the Tenant Association here. Having data about incidents gives us a basis to have security restored (other than the obvious need for it).

If you email the office or Capreit's escalation email (We Care) about security please copy the Tenant Association. We have also been tweeting out pictures showing security problems (@100wellesley). If you have a picture and description of a security incident, tweet it to us and we can retweet it. Or email it to us.

You can tweet to @Caprent to let them and the world know what you think about security cuts. Please include @100wellesley on the tweet.

CAPREIT's Recent Statements

The Tenant Association met on December 9 2019 with CAPREIT.

Among other issues we discussed security. CAPREIT's strategy is to tell us there has been no reduction in security service here. We were told the policy has always been that tenants should call the police in the event of security issues. So a reduction in security guard hours isn't a cut.

Let's fact check that.

CAPREIT says this has always been the security policy:

Tenants should call the police for security issues, not the office number (416)-924-5100.
Tenants should not contact the security officer on duty about a security issue.
The security officer will not engage in any way in a security issue such as a trespasser or an assault.
The security officer’s role is to call the police and direct police to the problem.

We informed CAPREIT that the answering service (that picks up the calls to the office number after hours) has been conveying information it receives from tenant calls for security issues to the security officer on duty. Then the security officer has been attending to the situation. CAPREIT said that they would instruct the answering service to stop doing this and to tell the tenants to call police. You read that right. CAPREIT will no longer handle security calls.

You know how security has always been done at this building. You know we've had a cut in security. The details about what we had previously are given below.

In a meeting on April 20 2018 attended by Georgeta Morar from CAPREIT (and other staff) along with two representatives from our security company we received different information. We wrote about it in our blog to inform tenants of security procedures at the building.

Let’s note the differences between the April 2018 information and what we were told in December 2019 has always been policy.

In April 2018:

There was clear instruction to call the office number between 6pm and 6am (the hours that security guards are present) in order to request security so that a building superintendent could answer the call and inform security [contradicts (1) above].
Security can be called to a security situation [contradicts (3) and (4) above].
We were instructed that if we observe a security officer making an arrest we should not to get involved in the situation [contradicts (3) and (4) above].
Supervisors from the security company can be called to the building if an arrest is made or multiple individuals are involved. The supervisor will arrive in a tactical unit that carries handcuffs, batons, and bullet-proof vests [contradicts (3) and (4) above].
Security guards give a daily report of all incidents to building management. If an arrest has been made at the building, building management will write an incident report and sent it to CAPREIT corporate management [contradicts (3) and (4) above].

We have asked CAPREIT to deliver a memo to every tenant outlining the current security procedure. We have also asked them to update security procedure information in the tenant welcome packages.

Read the April 2018 blog here.

Similar points about security procedure were given to the Tenant Association prior to Pride 2018. You can read the points that we were told in the blog here.