Gerry Toms is stadium manager of Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. He doesn’t like security sales people who are ‘flange sprocket’ merchants, and he told the IFSEC 2008 conference why.
CCTV is a most invaluable tool, he told the conference, ‘not just for security, but crowd safety’. He has been safety officer at the venue for eight years, and general manager for two years. Gerry Toms, former South Wales Police chief superintendent, was senior security officer for the European Union summit in 1998 and the rugby union world cup in 1999. The stadium’s nine-year-old CCTV is being upgraded – the site is also going over to electronic locking. He said that he was disappointed that most CCTV firms did not understand how a stadium operated, or crowd dynamics. If a CCTV company had understood what his stadium wanted, he would have given them his business. Instead, he took the project to an independent consultant. Gerry Toms spoke of what he called the ‘flange sprocket syndrome’, meaning CCTV sales people talking at length of the flange or sprocket features of their products. Quite frankly, Gerry said, he was not interested in the detail of how the camera worked: "There seems to be a national sales course for CCTV salesmen that theirs is the best flange sprocket in the world." It only leaves the customer totally confused, he added. The stadium set a standard template, invited six companies to tender, and in came prices varying from £50,000 to £90,000. Gerry commented: "I don’t understand how you get the massive variance in a spec, which was the same for all six."
While the venue does not host the FA Cup final now that Wembley is open – the 2006 final at Cardiff was the highest security event so far, Gerry said – the stadium hosts various sporting and other events, such as pop concerts. He said: "The most common question I am asked is, is the Millennium Stadium at risk? Yes, it is." As he said, it is ‘not a bad target for terrorists’. It’s recognisable, and a city centre location, only 100m from a retail centre. Cardiff shares in a recent sporting trend; of the ‘fan zone’, where the local authority might put on a wide-screen so that fans without tickets to the game can at least watch on TV and enjoy the atmosphere of being in the vicinity. (The evening of Gerry’s talk, the failure of a screen in Manchester city centre led to city centre disorder by Scottish fans of Rangers Football Club during and after the UEFA Cup final, which brought condemnation from the Prime Minister Gordon Brown down.) To return to Gerry’s talk: a match at Cardiff drawing 75,000 to the stadium may draw as many, 100,000 even, to the city centre, which would make an equal target for a bomber seeking mass casualties.
"Every event is always different," he said. A stadium that only hosts rugby every week can use a standard security plan; but the Millennium Stadium has had everything from indoor cricket to motorcycling to football internationals. The venue has to recruit, train and equip 1200 stewards, and might require 750 for a major event. They are all in-house: "We feel it’s better for us – continuity and quality of service." Another 1200 staff are in catering and the merchandising outlets. On an event day, all staff will get a security briefing, because even those non-security staff are regarded as ‘extra pairs of eyes’. The stadium’s electronic ticketing gives a good database of who is going to which event. While Gerry was a police officer, and a flare was let off in the stadium, killing a fan on the other side of the ground, it was the ticket and the CCTV that enabled police to arrest the culprit later.
Other speakers over the three days included, on internal security, David Chernick, of Reed Screening; John Scott, head of security at the Post Office; and, on single issue extremism, Guy Mathias of Huntingdon Life Sciences – the press however was not allowed in that session. On day one, speakers included Nigel Carpenter, part of BPโs group security; Ian Horseman-Sewell, director of critical national infrastructure protection at G4S, and Steve Cummings, director of the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure.
