A search of the person and the belongings they are carrying has become part of the routine of entering (and indeed leaving, in the case of retail) a sports or concert arena, a court building, or any high-footfall site such as the British Museum in London.
It may be an uncomplimentary reflection on how knife carrying and knife-related crime and injuries have become normalised in Britain. Also, do checks at those places mean that outside them is a ‘wild west’? The equivalent question in cyber is whether to fence off a part of the internet that is safe for children and the otherwise vulnerable (and admit that the rest of online is not safe for them) or to seek to make the entire internet child-friendly.
Some searching before entry to places has become accepted by society – notably at airports before going on a holiday. That means ever less need to explain or justify the search to first-timers. A security practitioner has to decide what are the items prohibited to keep out. At a football ground, they may be ‘pyros’, flares, that are becoming fashionable among some spectators, even at semi-professional level; in the fifth tier or even lower in English football, and in the second tier of Welsh. At sporting or other events the search may be for banners – whether they are (pardon any pun) banned entirely, or only allowed under strict conditions (for the recent third round FA Cup tie at Sunderland when local rivals Newcastle United took 6000 fans, such was the security to avoid clashes between the two sets of supporters, all the away fans were bussed in from Newcastle’s St James’ Park ground, pictured, to the Sunderland turnstiles; visiting fans could only take with them flags of less than two metres by one, and no flagpoles or ‘flags that are discriminatory in nature’).
When searching any crowd, even seemingly innocuous materials may be part of the arsenal for a single-issue protester: powder (as thrown over the snooker table at the world championship in Sheffield in 2023) or glitter (as thrown over Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer at the autumn 2023 Labour Party conference in Liverpool).
More practical and of interest to the vast majority of law-abiding customers or others to go through a search: are they queueing for long, and if so is it out of the cold, and rain? To stay with the British Museum in Bloomsbury, while it has had for several years a large white tent in the front courtyard, beyond it are rows for queues in the open. At least the Museum has that physical space to accommodate a queue. Some venues (such as the Brixton Academy, scene of a crush in December 2022 that led to two deaths, including a security officer) has no space for checks of ticket-holders; from the entrance doors to the street there’s only a couple of steps.
The Supreme Court in Westminster, too, goes straight from the public realm, Parliament Square, through the double doors into the building. That was my first experience of a search regime in 2024 and it seemed exemplary. On opening the door I was at once facing a security officer who listened to why I was there and then directed me right, to a table, where another security officer asked me to take off my coat and belt, and place them, any bags and any contents of my pockets into the airport-style grey plastic trays.
As an example of how security search regimes have entered popular culture, before Christmas British Airways ran wra-around adverts around the London business newspaper City AM, to advertise its services out of London City Airport. A picture showed someone tobogganing down a ski slope, sitting in a grey airport search tray. The message; BA’s and the airport’s service takes you quickly through Security and to the slopes.
In passing: to state the obvious, the more that people being searched are carrying, the longer the search will take. While some of the extra carrying is unavoidable – we wear more in winter; sites can do something about reducing how much people bring. I had three trays’ worth going through the x-ray machine at the Supreme Court, as it was a Friday afternoon and I had a rucksack for going on for the weekend, besides a bag of morning shopping. Besides the usual phone and wallet. Football clubs have laid down that ticket-holders may not bring luggage, even if they’re visiting from overseas or too far away to return home that day, and have checked out or haven’t yet checked into a hotel; the fact is that carting a wheeled suitcase around a stadium is a safety hazard and simply cannot fit under or around your bucket seat.
As an aside: is any of this giving away knowledge that might be of use to those who want to enter maliciously? Anyone can enter the Supreme Court, and indeed it welcomes visitors, as does Parliament across the road, so that justice and democracy is seen to be done. Besides, there is such a thing as ‘security minded communications’; savvy venues know that they can say things about their security, to reassure the law-abiding and deter the criminal, without giving criminals info about how to get around security measures.
Visitors for the first time to a venue may be curious or worried about what’s in store. Security always can keep back details: it’s one thing for a venue to state that it uses metal detection arches; another to give away how sensitive the setting is, or what the search is for. Here’s the ‘security information’ on the Supreme Court website.
Concluded on this link.
