You cannot eliminate terror; just as you cannot eliminate crime, or murder. So BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner told the two-day Counter Terror Expo in London in February.
Gardner spoke of his worry that ‘ lot of people in Whitehall operate in what I call a bubble’. He recalled a briefing at the Home Office with coloured charts. Gardner asked what are the main radicalising factors angering British Muslims; and the briefer did not know. In other words, the UK authorities are buried in matrices, charts and Powerpoint presentations, but losing the ‘big picture’. And no one could accuse Gardner – left for dead in the Saudi capital Riyadh when shot, and now a wheelchair user – of being buried in Powerpoint. While Gardner was too polite to make the point, the previous speaker John Wright of ACPO – replacing senior Met Police man Bob Quick – was somewhat bogged down in terms such as ‘partner agencies’ and ‘interventions’. At one point he said: “We are moving into another stage in terms of the PREVENT agenda for UK policing. We have provided a whole host of capability resources.” As he admitted somewhat disarmingly, he did not often speak to a business audience. The first day visitors to the QE2 Centre in Westminster seemed varied – from airport security, the Ministry of Defence, police CTSAs (counter terror security advisers), besides visitors from abroad, notably India, still reeling from the 72 hours of terrorism in Mumbai, all on live TV. <br><br>The surrounds to the venue hinted at the boom in physical and other security measures to counter terrorism, at high-profile sites. The black gates at the entrance to Downing Street are a staple of TV news. More subtle are the classical-looking five-foot walls and bollards in front of the government offices in Parliament Street and Parliament Square, still being built. When finished they have a heritage look, but in the square the parts still being built show their grey, anti-vehicle-bomb base. Speakers such as Dr Thomas Ludwig, of Leipzig firm Bruker Daltonik, described the anti-terror work at major venues such as the 2006 World Cup in Germany. The detectors at the Leipzig stadium picked up ammonia – not a chemical attack, but due to so many people using the toilets at half time on a hot day. Dr Ludwig described the plan in case of a release of gas: a detector with video camera could pick it up, up to 5km away. First responders carrying hand-held ion spectrometers would collect a sample, and take it to a mass spectrometer for analysis. The aim: to know what was causing the coughing or vomiting within 30 minutes, and respond medically. Now stadium managers who know their venues can empty within ten minutes might query whether a crowd would wait half an hour to be told what was gassing them!? The Germans’ point: a crowd fleeing to the exits or the back of a stand might be heading into the gas. A better place to evacuate might be the playing field. Dr Ludwig stressed that crowds turned up to have fun, not to worry; hence the firemen’s red chemical response suits were out of sight. The stadium was ready to decontaminate 50 people an hour, which as Dr Ludwig admitted was ‘not much’. His advice: ‘don’t trust one instrument’ and train your operators.<br><br>Who was there? <br><br>Among those at the Security Institute stand: David Gill vice-chairman, general manager Di Thomas; Donna Alexander of Advance Security; and Emma Shaw of Esoteric. Also around, David Evans, the BSIA’s 2012 man; consultant Simon Imbert; and spotted outside, walking ironically in the direction of New Scotland Yard, the former Met Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, who was in charge of London Olympics security until he and the Met fell out last year.
