In the second of an occasional series, Mark Rowe enjoys a Thames-side pub lunch with John Franklin-Webb and Patricia Grant-Wilson of GIS.
There are many demanding places to secure in Britain, and Lordโs cricket ground, the St Johnโs Wood, London home of cricket – and Marylebone Cricket Club – is one of them. There are demanding times to secure those places, too, and the Saturday of the Lordโs Test match – and this summerโs, July 23, was against world champions Australia – ranks as a demanding time. GIS this year and last provided explosives search dogs to the ground. High-profile visitors through the gates included former Prime Minister Sir John Major, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, and Australian PM John Howard. As John Franklin-Webb, director of Oxfordshire-based GIS, recalls, Sir John Major was fine about the search; such people know all about the risks and the reasons for such precautions.
But what of the stereotypical MCC member, who may respond to a request to stop for a search by saying something on the lines of โdonโt you know who I am?!โ John replies that while there was some grunts and groans from visitors, security staff were able to do their job. Crucial to doing that job is proper customer care: polite words (โgood morning, sirโ) and prompt action. Last year, John adds, 300-plus members of the MCC wrote to compliment the club on the security measures, including the search dogs.
John Howard was meeting PM Tony Blair in London on Thursday, July 21 when news of the Tube and bus bomb attempts came. John Franklin-Webb reports that GIS spoke with the head of Mr Howardโs close protection team; stopping that VIP cavalcade would have been a risk in itself. Rather than delay Mr Howard at the entrance to Lordโs – his vehicles having been checked before setting off for the cricket – GIS checked the vehicles once Mr Howard and his entourage had got out.
At this point in the conversation, food was served at the Maybush. A swan was gliding past downstream on the Thames, upstream of Oxford in rural Oxfordshire; however the day was overcast and we did not sit outside. Professional Security tucked into rabbit pie (£10.95).
Taking up the story again, John added that the GIS dogs and handlers cleared the media centre for a visit by Mr Howard. Other areas were checked such as litter bins; the main stand; the underground car park; and so on. While not wanting to give operational details away, the search begins days before, checking people and vehicles from the proverbial retired colonel to a cleaning contractor to someone delivering flowers. John adds: โWe will them look at certain target areas, and work on a search and seal basis, bearing in mind that our role is very much defensive searching.โ Besides the media centre looking over the ground there is the โmedia villageโ of TV and other vehicles, humming in the run-up to the five-day match. The sniffer dogs are there to identify suspicious people or packages; and to reassure the public; they are a second line of defence, behind the stewards, provided by REACT. The man who brokers, if you like, GIS to Alan Baxter, head of security at Lordโs, is former police officer now consultant Richard Hester.
Earlier, John Franklin-Webb had shown me around GIS. The kennels for example where more than 30 explosive and drugs search dogs live – spaniels and labradors. I can report that the kennels are clean, light, and airy; that the animals are exercised; and that the kennels are well secured, with access control, intruder detection and some CCTV. John told me something of training for the DOVES project, for the detection of vapours and explosives inside cargo. Rather than dog and handler going to the container to sniff, air samples are taken and it is for the dog then to search for very small traces of a substance. If a dog signals that there is something suspicious, a second dog searches, and if the second dog responds then humans take over.
Royston Maxwell, GISโs training man, a former career Thames Valley Police man, spoke of the reform of the licensed trade – with echoes of the licences for the security industry through the Security Industry Authority. In pubs and clubs, you have personal licences – held by you, the pub manager – and premises licences, that cover for instance fire protection measures. Professional Security reported in June how secondary schools in Buckinghamshire have employed GIS dogs on random testing of pupils for drugs. The schools, with police and parentsโ support, seeking to be supportive rather than punitive. Returning to the pub trade, GIS has begun to offer what John Franklin-Webb calls a โlicence protection programmeโ – that is, a drugs search dog and handler will check premises and pub or club-goers at the entrance, but as a trained pair of eyes and ears, the handler can, for instance, as a fire marshal give informed advice to the client on fire hazards.
But back to the Maybush; over coffee the conversation see-sawed across the licenced trade; and regulation of door staff and private security. John related how in the early days of SIA licensing going live – when the authority ran door superviser licences first in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight – he walked out on one meeting with SIA staff. While his view is that the SIA has rightly come in for some flak, John having taken exception to the SIA argument that it has to be obeyed because it is the law; the fact is that the SIA is here to stay, and has to be complied with. It was striking how what John Franklin-Webb said was similar – even down to the precise words – with what others in private security are saying about the SIA-regulated future, even down to using the word โinterestingโ to describe the near future. He calls for a โlevel playing fieldโ and feels that the regulator should speak not only to the security industry but to the clients – the consumers of security – the ones who are going to have to pay.
Something else on Johnโs mind is also familiar to those in security or indeed any service sector who seek to do things properly – meet the right standards, be insured, and so forth – yet that means the service offered costs more than some other competitors. Those competitors, however, John knows, under cut on price by cutting corners, or by offering a service that they cannot in fact provide, perhaps dangerously so. The client, John adds, has to ask the right questions; ask for testimonials, recommendations. To return to the dogs and their handlers at Lordโs; they had to start work hours before the 10.30am start of play, until mid-afternoon. Dog and handler have to be kept on their mettle; the handler has to keep the animal motivated. And, to repeat, at Lordโs like any other public venue, the security person has to be diplomatic to someone who may resent their wife being asked to have a picnic basket searched.
Security, in other words, Professional Security suggests, is telling people โnoโ – you cannot do that, or you can only come in if you do this? John replies that clients are buying in. To take the pub trade: if someone has had too much to drink, if the door superviser helps that person out of the venue smoothly, without conflict, the person the worst for wear will not cause trouble on the street, or break a window, or hit the children at home. Managing conflict in the pub, then, helps to satisfy the Governmentโs stated aim to reduce alcohol-related violence and anti-social behaviour. That prompts Professional Security to recall that the SIA has carried out checks on door staff in tandem with town and city centre police, making their own, wider, checks that pub and clubs are complying with the rules. John adds: โI have seen a change in the stature of door staff,โ and by that he means there are not so many large men at the front of pubs and clubs. The door men at the very entrance, the most public face of the venue, might be quite slight in appearance; only when you look closely, can you tell that the men are physically fit. And just as some venues ban tattoos, so some places do not allow their door staff to have tattoos. The bottom line though is that whether at a venue, from a pub, to Lordโs; or searching for drugs in a workplace, or school, even; there is something about a dog that the British can relate to.
