A call for partnership with private security by a police officer? While security people may be forgiven for thinking they have heard it all before, at the Skills for Security conference the call was from a London Olympics planner, and as he said, police and security guard firms alike will not have enough staff.
The speaker was Metropolitan Police Supt Malcolm Baker, who began by recalling how 24 hours of elation in 2005, on London winning the staging of the 2012 Games, ended with 7-7. "Failure is not an option for the 2012 Games," he told the audience at the Kassam Stadium, Oxford.
And as if the London bus and Tube suicide bombings was not enough of a reminder of how high the stakes are, Supt Baker recalled working with security guarding companies before the Millennium, at Greenwich. He revealed that there were authenticated passwords given that the Greenwich Dome had bombs that the authorities had missed and that the site would have to be evacuated. But because of trust in the competence of staff the commanders ignored it – or rather, as Supt Baker corrected himself, they did not ignore the threat, but rather risk-managed it.
So there are plenty of ways that 2012 organisers can find themselves up for the high jump. And the summer games will come sooner than you might think. As Supt Baker said: "Five yaers is no time at all … If you leave it too late, you will be too late, and we will have these failires – which is not an option."
For a while it’s been a given that private security and police will share work during the Olympics. That’s the way it’s been at past Games such as Sydney in 2000; and speakers from police and private security – such as David Evans, the former Legion Security MD who was present at Oxford – said as much in a morning of talks at IFSEC 2007 in May. But Supt Baker spelt out the implications. To return to that Millennium Dome threat; if there is a bomb threat, the police have to be as certain of private security equipment and working practices as their own. And who is responsible for what. And as Supt Baker added, with responsibility comes accountability.
While agencies such as the fire service and ambulance and others are speaking to each other in a way they didn’t in previous generations, there is a way to go. From his work so far Supt Baker knows of CCTV, alarms, guarding and so on. But as Supt Baker disarmingly admitted, he had no idea what the talk at the SfS conference of level two and three learning meant.
For starters, what are we – so Supt Baker put it – trying to secure against? Hence it’s important for a common picture – situational awareness – about the risks. He spoke of interoperability – working together, in other words. Who does what tasks? And what training and experience do you need for them? There are regular cases of police working alongside guarding – at Wimbledon, political party conferences. But the working assumption for 2012 is that there will not be enough police or security people.
Terrorism is not new; so we don’t have to re-invent the wheel about public safety. Giving the example of the foiled plot last year to attempt to blow up transatlantic airliners, terrorists’ bombs may be passing through guards’ hands. Those security guards have to know what they are looking for. International terrorism is no longer what he termed ’10 pence terrorism’ – that is, you put 10p in a call box and made a bomb threat. Now terror is indiscriminate; terrorists want to kill people. They are determined to stretch us, Supt Baker went on, with a sequence of attacks. That is, there is the danger that terrorists may seek to pick off the many Olympics venues (which are not all in London). As for chemical, biological and radiological threats, Supt Baker wondered if new skills were needed.
Supt Baker, 26 years in the police, described the Met as a contractor to the Games; but the force cannot do it on their own. Nor, he went on, will it be in the old way of perimeter guards and VIP protection. There will not be enough police for police to stand on gates. He spoke instead of integration and true partnership. And trust. As he said, things come the time will go wrong: "Plans never succeed." But giving of space to people to do their job was, he admitted, not here yet. And, he repeated, there is not much time. He wanted to bench-test before summer 2012.
Having already mentioned the court case after the Stockwell shooting, Supt Baker had this to say about the health and safety implications: "We are a risk-averse nation, and the recent ruling against the police, I suggest, will have profound significance on everyone in this room," that is, the audience of security managers and trainers. "A knock on effect on how we manage risk and protect people against a threat."
He spoke of how it was not about police doing security work or vice versa, but about making sure there was compatible kit, so that if a private security company comes with (for example) screening devices, the search co-ordinator is satisfied with it. Ditto uniforms and radios. And are security firms resilient enough for the Games, which including the preparation could last 60 days? As Supt Baker said, many security contractors have ‘bread and butter’ contracts that they cannot leave for the Olympics. So if the security company has a lack of staff because of work for the Games, that is a risk taken by the security contractor, he made plain. The guarding contractors seeking Olympic work has to show trust in that they do not know that they will get work; by the time of putting ink on a contract, it’s too late to prepare yourself.
For all the questions he threw up, he ended on the heartening note that so much is done already – if dignitaries are moving around London for example, there is work with security staff in hotels; and in work to secure the critical national infrastructure (CNI), private security is involved. Supt Baker’s verdict on the task: "I won’t say it is easy, but it is absolutely do-able." Strikingly, to take what he concluded with, that task boils down to the practical – making sure private security’s trained and skilled stadium and other searchers can work alongside police searchers – but also with the intangible: that commanders such as Supt Baker have the confidence in private security, the face to face understanding, that matters when the clock ticks and command and control have difficult decisions to make when the plan goes awry.
