Company: Industrial Security & Investigators, Inc.
Type of business: Security services and private investigations.
Revenue: WND
Owners: Maurice and Jean Dionne
Number of employees: 40+
Year founded : 1980
A framed picture of Dick Tracy, the trench coat-wearing comic book detective, hangs in Maurice Dionne’s North Providence office. That seems to be about as close to popular private investigator stereotypes as Industrial Security & Investigators gets.
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And that’s the way the husband and wife team who founded the agency want it.
The family-run business defies the slick private investigator image sometimes portrayed in bad TV movies and offers an alternative to large security companies, according to Jean Dionne. When the Dionnes started they typically worked together, using their image as a couple to their advantage since most surveillance subjects would be more suspicious of a Magnum P.I. or Dirty Harry type. For one investigation they even managed to slip into a wedding and blend in with the guests.
The Dionnes were also among those who lobbied successfully in 1988 for a bill that tightened the standards of licensing for private investigators.
”When we went into business, I wanted to bring a more caring touch to the business,” she said. “Our motto is: We’re big enough to do the job and small enough to care.”
Her husband, Maurice, was working as a full-time investigator for another company in the late 1970s, when they decided to start the business. The duo started in a small office on North Main Street in Providence, but they have since purchased a Waterman Avenue office building in North Providence and increased their employee roster to more than 40 people, including part-time workers.
At first the focus of the business was strictly investigations, including “domestic” work checking out possible marital infidelities and searching for missing persons. In 1985 they started offering security services for industrial and office complexes, construction sites, picket lines and other situations.
For the last 14 years Industrial Security & Investigators has provided guard service, mobile patrols and other services to a variety of clients, including the owners of the former Narragansett Brewery site in Cranston. Normally Jean Dionne is protective of her client list, because of industry competition. But, she said, she made an exception and disclosed the brewery account, because the arrangement ended this month when the vacant buildings were demolished.
Security services now make up about 80 percent of the business, while investigations take up the remaining 20 percent, she said. A growing component of the security business is providing shuttle service, particularly on college campuses.
But their security officers aren’t armed guards or police substitutes, she explained. Instead they act as the eyes and ears of a client. Security officers who check office buildings after hours, for instance, would report broken exterior lights, people hanging around on company property and other observations.
Patrick Schulz is the company’s general manager and he oversees security services. ”We really try to have a personal touch,” Schulz said, explaining they try to match a client’s needs with the types of security officers they assign to a job.
”There are lots of different types of security accounts. It’s gone a long way from having the big rugged, muscular types, the John Wayne or the Clint Eastwood types,” he said. “Young guys, pumped up types there’s a place for a guy like that, when you really need a physical presence.
”You’re not going to put someone like that in an elderly housing account,” Schulz said. They would rather assign a staff member with good communication and “people skills” to a post like that, he explained.
New employees must get clearance from the attorney general’s office indicating they have no criminal record. People with felony convictions don’t qualify. An employee with a misdemeanor record might receive a waiver from the attorney general’s office.
Besides being vice president of the business, Jean Dionne helps female entrepreneurs. The Small Business Administration named her Rhode Island’s 1999 Women in Business Advocate of the Year.
Her role in the business has changed in recent years. Though she maintains her investigator’s credentials, she has backed away from that work and focuses more on day-to-day operations.
Maurice Dionne, however, is content to stay focused on the action and training staff members. He said he particularly enjoys working missing persons cases and helping people track down long-lost relatives. In one case he helped a California woman, whose biological mother was from Rhode Island, meet a brother she didn’t even know existed.
”There’s more to it than money, there’s satisfaction that you helped somebody.”
