Soyini Chan Shue, founder/owner of the security firm City Safe Partners, used the skills and knowledge she gained working with the New York Police Department (NYPD) to start her own business.
Chan Shue retired from the NYPD in 2015 after serving as an officer for 22 years. She gained a world of experience: working in community policing, answering radio calls while out on patrol, serving in the traffic control division, and rising to the rank of sergeant-special assignment while investigating vice/drugs and narcotics with the Organized Crime Control Bureau.
When she heard about a small security firm that was for sale, Chan Shue thought that with the public safety and security experience she already had, it was her chance to become an entrepreneur. “But I kind of underestimated entrepreneurship, to be honest,” she said with a laugh in thinking back about that today. “It looks so glamorous from the outside, but when I got into it, I said, ‘Oh, man, this is a little bit more complicated and demanding than I initially thought.’”
Chan Shue purchased the 12-person Overwatch Services security firm and quickly rebranded it as City Safe Partners Security. She wanted City Safe Partners to give off a certain kind of feel — less of a vigilante aura and more of a sense of safety.
“Cops are people, and some people are just jaded when they have a bad experience with (police),” Chan Shue told the AmNews. “They start to think all people are bad; some people have preconceived notions. I see the good in people and I see the worst in people, and that’s the beauty of policing.”
When she worked with the NYPD, Chan Shue enjoyed the aspect of policing that brought her in touch with people. She liked meeting people every day, visiting schools and store owners, and getting to know a neighborhood. “Sometimes you see people doing amazing deeds to help people out when they’re going through difficult situations,” she recalled. “You see people who will help the police: I’ve been helped several times, and that really taught me a lot about people and how to treat people, whether they committed a crime or not. You know, you treat people with respect.
“When you live in the same city that you work in (as police), you’re going to run into somebody that you’ve locked up before, so you try to make that experience as respectful as possible, because you’re not really the judge and the jury,” she added. “You’re just enforcing the law and keeping people safe.”
As the new owner of City Safe Partners, Chan Shue found herself being a boss. Instead of receiving a steady NYPD paycheck, she was responsible for payroll, company tax compliance, and nurturing and keeping clients. After hiring professionals to help her, she enrolled in various free classes offered at local women and small business development programs throughout the city. That’s where she learned how to be an entrepreneur. And, since she had spent decades living and working in Harlem, she was able to cultivate more clients for City Safe Partners.
A community-based background
At age 20, Chan Shue made two monumental changes in her life: She moved out of her family’s South Bronx home and to Harlem, and she accepted an offer to join the NYPD.
After high school, she had wanted to become a nurse, but while she was attending Bronx Community College, her father had a stroke, causing her to pause her studies so she could help look after him. Once he recovered, she picked up odd jobs (like braiding hair at Harlem’s Billy Jeans Hair Salon) while looking for a career she could both like and use to pay the bills.
Then the NYPD called. She had taken the Police Officer Exam at age 18 after her mother read in “The Chief” about an upcoming test. Chan Shue had an aunt who was an NYPD sergeant and knew that the NYPD offered retirement benefits after 20 years. Her parents said, “You love to help people; maybe this is a great job for you.”
Chan Shue’s scores came back high, and the department called her right away. When they found out she was 18, they told her she’d have to wait until age 20 before she could start. By age 20, she was living on her own and realized that becoming a nurse meant taking more biology courses and paying more money, and decided to join the NYPD. “I said, let me join the NYPD, let me give this a shot. And, actually, once I joined, I loved it. There was no looking back.
“My father had said, ‘If you want to make a change, you got to be part of it to make the change.’ I was glad that he gave me that advice because I think that…people who understand the issues within our community…make better police officers. I think that we’re also mindful of how we police, especially if you grow up very conscious and my parents were very conscious, very pro-Black. We had to treat people with respect, no matter what. Those were just some basic core values I was brought up with. I think that really helped me throughout my police career.”
Today, Chan Shue’s Harlem-based national security firm has a total of 963 employees—and is still growing.
City Safe Partners Security is licensed to operate in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, and Texas. Chan Shue said the firm hires people from the urban communities where it’s based every day. “Especially with the large contracts that we receive: We are doing free online training for people who don’t have the certifications that we require for the sites we’re hiring for. We’re also sponsoring people for the Fire Guard Training. We also are working with New York City Workforce 1 to provide additional training to people that the [Workforce1 Career Centers] send over to us so that we can get them licensed and they can start working right away. We have a really quick turnaround process for hiring.”
With her home-grown business, Chan Shue feels she’s satisfying her childhood need to help people. City Safe Partners (230 West 135th Street, Harlem; http://citysafepartners.com/) provides cybersecurity, private investigations, and armed and unarmed security at airports, residences, businesses, and city and state agencies. The firm trains and employs locals who can become 32BJ union-aligned security guards and possibly use their experience to enter the world of law enforcement.
“I used to be a security guard, so I’m going to say it’s a great job, especially for students or people who are entering into the workforce,” said Chan Shue. “There’s always work in this industry: It’s one of the fastest-growing industries and is expected to grow by 30 percent over the next 20 years, so it will always be in demand; you can always find work. The more certifications you have, the higher pay that you will get.
“I think we have a really good entry point for someone who wants to start a law enforcement career, because with City Safe Partners, they will come to understand the discipline of working around the clock, doing investigative work, and reporting incidents.”