{"id":33531,"date":"2026-05-06T00:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T00:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/33531\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T00:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T00:20:15","slug":"new-central-command-centre-just-what-toronto-police-service-needs-ahead-of-world-cup-mayor-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/33531\/","title":{"rendered":"New central command centre just what Toronto Police Service needs ahead of World Cup, Mayor says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks to members of the media during a tour of the Toronto Integrated Safety and Security Unit Area Command Centre on Tuesday.EDUARDO LIMA\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Toronto Police took the wraps off a new multimillion-dollar central command centre Tuesday that will be used to co-ordinate the city\u2019s safety and security efforts during the upcoming FIFA World Cup<\/a>, which Mayor Olivia Chow told reporters would be \u201cpart of the lasting legacy\u201d of the tournament.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Integrated Safety and Security Unit Area Command Centre \u2013 otherwise known as TACC \u2013 will bring together staff from multiple agencies. The city\u2019s police and fire departments, paramedical emergency services, office of emergency management, hospital services, coroner\u2019s office, TTC and Metrolinx, and utilities such as Toronto Water and Toronto Hydro, will each be connected to their own operations hub elsewhere in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis room gives us the ability to really have all those command centres be able to talk to one another in a unified way,\u201d said Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw, during a press conference at the new facility attended by the mayor.<\/p>\n

He noted the tournament is unfolding against a backdrop of what he termed \u201cgeopolitical events\u201d that are changing the \u201cthreat environment\u201d and unsettling civic leaders and communities around the globe. \u201cThere\u2019s an additional layer of complexity that we have to be prepared for,\u201d he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail after the event.<\/p>\n

(Toronto Police requested media not disclose the location of the new facility.) <\/p>\n

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow makes open pitch to sponsors for World Cup fan festival<\/a><\/p>\n

Chief Demkiw said the department\u2019s current incident command centre, \u201cjust does not have the capacity to deal with the scope and scale of what FIFA requires, and, frankly, has outgrown our capacity for our day-to-day activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPolicing FIFA is the longest continuous operational period, requiring the largest deployment of members in Toronto Police Service history. So, we needed the right tools to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Chow praised the new facility, saying she had visited a police command centre at Rogers Centre during the six Taylor Swift concerts in the fall of 2024 and the Toronto Blue Jays playoff run last October, and recognized its inadequacies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very small, it\u2019s very crowded. We had fire, police, EMS and others in one small place, and then down the hall \u2013 you had to walk a long distance \u2013 it was transportation, the TTC, communication, the rest of the team, Metrolinx \u2013 they were all in a separate room.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Toronto Integrated Safety and Security Unit Area Command Centre will allow Toronto Police and other agencies to view the city in real-time during the upcoming FIFA World Cup.EDUARDO LIMA\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

\u201cTo see that you can have both the space and the technology to support a major event, it makes me very proud to be mayor of the city of Toronto, to walk in here and say, \u2018Okay, this works.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The centre cost approximately $12.5-million to build, according to Toronto Police Insp. David Ecklund, the integrated safety and security unit lead for the FIFA World Cup 26, though most of that would be paid through the police department\u2019s long-term capital funding rather than World Cup monies. Last week, Mayor Chow said the $380-million budget for Toronto\u2019s World Cup efforts includes $94-million for event safety and security, of which $66-million is allocated to Toronto Police.<\/p>\n

Both Chief Demkiw and Mayor Chow said the centre would be part of the World Cup\u2019s legacy for Toronto. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a state of the art facility,\u201d said Chief Demkiw. \u201cIt was built for FIFA, but in the future it will serve as a legacy real-time operations centre for the Toronto Police Service\u2019s day-to-day operations, and will be capable of supporting our major incident command structure, incorporating other police agency stakeholders for all the major events our city hosts every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The police department also showed off its newest acquisition, a mobile TACC unit, complete with an accompanying drone, that can accommodate up to 15 personnel, though Insp. Ecklund noted in an interview with The Globe that the vehicle may not necessarily be deployed during the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Toronto Police Service’s new command post vehicle is shown during a tour of the Toronto Integrated Safety and Security Unit Area Command Centre on Tuesday.EDUARDO LIMA\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

The new permanent TACC will get its first real-time test this Saturday, when Toronto Police hold an exercise during Toronto FC\u2019s match against Inter Miami at BMO Field, site of the city\u2019s six World Cup matches. The event will mark the first time the stadium has accommodated 45,000 spectators, after a temporary renovation for the World Cup has added almost 18,000 seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be able to monitor activity across the city in real time, including crowd movement and traffic conditions, using technology such as drone footage \u2026 City of Toronto cameras, traffic cameras, MTO cameras,\u201d said Insp. Ecklund.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have some extra officers out there in places like Liberty Village, in and around the area, just to see, really for the first time for our purposes, what a stadium full of close to 45,000 people looks like, in terms of a soccer match,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can learn a lot from the way the crowds move, the way the crowds behave, access an egress, and we can watch all of that from here. So, when we go live for FIFA events, we have a pretty good operational, situational awareness as to what will be happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Insp. Ecklund added that there will be \u201cthousands\u201d of security personnel deployed on each of the World Cup match days, including officers from Peel Regional Police, Durham Regional Police, York Regional Police, Ontario Provincial Police, and Ottawa Police, as well as private security personnel hired by the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks to members of the media during a tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,48,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-33531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-pei","42":"tag-photos","43":"tag-political-news","44":"tag-political-opinion","45":"tag-politics","46":"tag-politics-news","47":"tag-quebec","48":"tag-sports-news","49":"tag-technology","50":"tag-toronto","51":"tag-travel","52":"tag-trudeau","53":"tag-us-news","54":"tag-world-news","55":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}