Any suggestion that queues might be a result of security checks at venues is unnecessary and may give private security a bad name, Mark Rowe argues.
Recently I heard someone on stage at a security event suggest that queueing outside a venue was good, because it meant that yours bags will be searched. Although the speaker had a distinguished CV, they didn’t know what they were talking about. It might be dangerous for the standing of private security if it stood for the idea that queues and (good) security go together. Because it’s quite the opposite – an overly-long queue is just as likely to be a sign of poor security practice, or more general bad management, which could even create a security risk if well-meaning, hassled security officers on the door try to reduce the queue to something manageable by a ‘work-around’ that skimps on actual security checking.
Let’s agree that well-managed queues are part of British civilisation; even welcome, because they avoid chaos of a free-for-all competition for a bus, or taxi, at any rank outside any city’s main rail station; or at a bus or railway station ticket office, or outside an embassy (pictured last month, Portuguese-speaking officers marshalling the queue outside the Consulate General of Portugal in London W1). Or consider the most famous queue of our times, in mid-September 2022 the miles-long queue in London when hundreds of thousands paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at her lying-in-state at the Palace of Westminster. As featured in the October 2022 print edition of Professional Security Magazine, there and earlier in Edinburgh the venue had airport-like screening at the door. I recall at the weekend of the ceremony, being at Folkestone rail station, when the platform announcement included the 12-hour estimated wait for anyone in the queue. The long time was nothing to do with security but sheer mathematics: all those who wanted to pay their respects had to funnel into one line that went past the coffin.
Likewise the British Museum, an art gallery or other visitor attraction, even if free to enter, may set a time for ticketed arrivals, to smooth out the crowds over the day, or rather to give more control over the flow; so that Security, and managers generally, can plan, and not be in the hands of crowds who turn up when they feel like it (not at the very start or end of a day, more in the middle). Conversely, that many in a sports crowd will leave it until the last minute to enter a stadium, can create a security risk because that can create a logjam at entrances near kick-off time. Those wishing to smuggle in weapons or ‘pyros’ (flares to let off) can take advantage of that, and seek to blend in when the queue is longest and those doing door security checks may be tempted, in the name of avoiding aggro, to do shorter checks than earlier.
Again, it’s a matter of sheer maths: if you know roughly how many have paid to attend, and you only have so many stewards to open so many entrances, you can judge how many will go through each entrance per minute or hour depending on how long on average it takes to search a visitor (and their bag; and for them to have their ticket scanned, and physically move out of the way). If the visiting number is so large and the number of entrances too few, a queue is inevitable; as was the case at the two most blatant queues I have been in, pre-covid, at Olympia (for a security exhibition, ironically) and one Monday morning at East Midlands Airport, catching a flight to go to a Security TWENTY Dublin event. In neither case did Security cause the distressingly long queue.
At Olympia, I was in a scrum at the entrance on Hammersmith Road, so tightly packed that accidentally-on-purpose I got in quicker by entering on the VIP side I was not entitled to; so packed were we all, anyone managing the entrance could not eject me; there was nowhere to eject me, except inside. In other words, not only was the throughput of visitors so slow compared to the thousands wanting entry (each entrant had to show proof of identity to have a ticket printed out) that queueing broke down, the place was actually less able to control access. Quite apart from the scrum creating a ‘crowded place’ that presented a target for a terrorist. The only solution would have been to have more terminals for printing out visitors passes and people employed to check ID; or to turn away people.
Or to consider more high-profile queues: before the Spice Girls reunion concert at Coventry’s edge of city stadium (after some equipment failure, that prompted angry fans to chant to be let in, organisers did just that) and the Champions League 2022 final in Paris when some Liverpool FC fans got tear-gassed and many couldn’t take their seats until well into the match. In neither case, and not in the Uefa report into the Stade de France debacle, did anyone suggest security was high because of the long queueing.
Here lies the danger for private security if it chooses to imply that carrying out security checks lengthens queues, and that people will accept it as a price to pay (metaphorical, or literal, if a Protect Duty requires venues to employ more security) or people even welcome because it makes them feel safer. The truth in human nature is that people have a low threshold of tolerance for any delay, when above all they want to get inside and enjoy what they have paid to be there for. They haven’t paid to shuffle forward in a queue to go through a metal detection arch. The hours-long queues for the Wimbledon fortnight tennis each July is an exception that proves the rule: there, people may anticipate a long queue, even embrace it as part of the charm, and enjoy the fellowship of others doing the same.
Consider the recent advert on the front of the London free daily newspaper City AM, by British Airways, showing a woman on skis on a snowy slope and holding not two ski-sticks but a tray for going through Security at an airport, that holds high heel shoes. The punchline: ‘From check-in to gate in 20 minutes. Choose London City Airport this winter’. In other words, for businesses such as airlines, convenience is a selling point; and the inconvenience of queueing is not; and if cynics say that airports quite like having passengers go through convoluted security so that they are a captive audience for air-side shops selling chocolate, perfume and the like, passengers cannot buy things if they are so delayed going through Security that they fear they’ll miss their flight and are in a bad mood.
Since the Coliseum in Rome hosted gladiators, Christians and lions, venue managers have juggled how to get a large number of customers through a small number of entrances (and out again a few hours later). Venues are stuck with how many entrance points the architects have given the building; only the amount of security or other checking at a finite number of entry points is flexible. If therefore annoyingly, overly-long queueing becomes chronic, and blame is placed upon Security, fairly or not, that’s an intangible but powerful mark against it.
