Monday 29 July 2013

The big sports day part the next

Last year, Britain was lost in a wave of excitement, we were having a great big sports day. Rejoice and be glad. Long time readers will remember I was part of this little adventure working for a private security firm whose name will immediately spring to your mind. Of course with all my passes and badges complete I was expecting the call any day. Nothing happened.

Then with the company already deployed and questions already being asked I got told I needed to go and learn something called "guarding". This it turned out was a very worrying course for people who guard buildings when they are empty, night watchmen in old parlance.

It did get me all worried, did people really need a course that told them if a vehicle turns up at the gate they go and check the vehicle driver credentials then let the vehicle in closing the gate again after in entered? If that's the level of the staff I  think you have a problem before you start....

Actually, thinking outside the box, if there are two vehicles you check both of them then let them both in together. Gosh that WAS rocket science. 

Then in the afternoon it was the radio course, well not really, they had none of the model of radio being used available so we had to look at pictures of one and note how to turn it on, how to turn it off, how to push the button to transmit and remember to let go when we had finished. Even more challenging rocket science stuff

Then we had to pretend our mobile phones were radios and talk to each other using their version of radio procedure which was pretty cumbersome in use and involved a lot of repeating of call signs. In practise everywhere I actually worked ditched the system and used assigned simple call signs, and  military radio procedure.

Next up, we had to learn the phonetic alphabet, virtually everyone on the course was ex military, ex police, ex fire service or like myself radio experienced. Eyes were rolling all round the room.

During our last tea break some strangers arrived these, it turned out were the admin team and to say they were interested in us would be a mild understatement. Would we be interested in seeing the set up they asked? To a person we agreed and wandered over to their HQ after the day ended.

HQ turned out to be a dingy building, screaming neglect where a variety of people were coming and going. There wasn't even a telephone, they could not speak to personnel and personnel could not speak to them.

I, of course had a Door Persons badge and Olympic security accreditation. As soon as they was that they pounced. Did I want to work, well, OK. Could I start now, well err no I had not actually arranged anything like that with the student. How about tomorrow? Tomorrow my step daughter was getting married, of course I would work if they guaranteed the ensuing legal fees around the separation, the chief organiser, a young Irish chap laughed. We would get on OK then.

Of course I didn't have anything by way of uniform, no worries just turn up.

So turn up I did, what a revelation, in the past I had worked in a lot of settings, this was something new.

I had agreed to do nights as nights were a problem, no one would do nights.

The first night with nothing bar our badges to say who we were we were deployed to guard one of the Olympic venues; this was  a major sporting stadium  with a big capacity and there were 18 of us.

Already the Police were in, there were Police on all the entrances and our rag tag army looked shoddy next to them.

What you won't know is that the police were everywhere the public could see. If you could not see it it probably wasn't being watched. The Police are pros though, so when a minibus turned up at our gate and we checked all their warrants they were more impressed than irritated.

"You checked my car when I came in an hour ago" said an Olympic official,  ""and we have to check every car as it comes in, that's security"   "But I'm...."  "going to be treated like everyone else as we don't know that a bunch of terrorists don't have you family hostage making you smuggle in a dirty bomb". This wasn't what Olympics man wanted to hear so he got hold of the duty security manager. Shortly after we got a visit on the gate to find out what it was all about. This duty manager was Para, lets call him that, went everywhere in jeans and a pullover, had an air of quiet authority, said he had been an NCO in the Parachute Regiment and that when he left the army he had set up home in Hereford. Now there was a clue to what unit he had actually been in if ever there was one!!  He told us we should not really let Olympic man in through our gate at all, next time send him to the next gate where the proper search grew were located, every time he came in they could give his car a proper search unload everything out of it and put it through the X ray scanner, all said with a perfectly straight face. Good man!!

 Security at a huge venue like that with less than 20 people was always going to be a joke. Except it wasn't funny, with 20 of us on, at least 7 would be on break at any time, meaning we were really 14. At about 2 am I was given a shift in the media centre, this was a sprawling yard outlying the stadium. When I walked in I nearly fainted, there was literally about 30 tons of copper wire in reels and aluminium everywhere.  It was like a metal thieves wet dream in there. The previous guards were from a sub contractor and  had set themselves up a little den in the big catering tent with a comfy chair and a transistor radio. It was also an obvious feature with limited routes in and out and not much of a view of the approaches of which there were several, a couple of them being attractively dark.

Para came to see what I was up to about 30 minutes later, went into the office and emerged looking puzzled.  I stepped out of the shadows, told him there was no way I was sitting in there waiting for a bunch of neer do wells to whack me over the head with a brick. I had made myself a little den in the darkest bit of the site where I could see pretty much everything but I was pretty difficult to spot. If someone was going to case the place they might as well think there was no one there as there was just one bloke they could smack on the head before nicking everything. If they came in mob handed I could count them in, radio them in then get the hell out of there. That seemed to be  the right answer for him, we were getting on well.

Dawn came and the shift ended, all the shifts started and ended at 6 am and 6 pm - bad practice, if I had been up to no good I would have been timing my attack for a time like a  shift change.

During the day things started to unravel as it became crystal clear just how few staff the company had. LOCOG put their foot down and got the  Police in to run the stadium. Officers were bussed in from all over and the company unceremoniously kicked out.

There was an element of cynicism to this, the Police were very public in their presence. In the background and kept out of sight of the public a small number of guards from the firm that normally secures the stadium were in place.  In public it was horses, fire arms officers and hordes of cheery Police Officers, of course they were cheery, they were on double time the lot of them!!!

The company still had charge of the two hotels used for athlete accommodation, for my second night shift i was draughted over there. The security managers were on rotating shifts and the first hotel was run by "wooden top" a retired Police Officer, who was dressed in something just short of a morning  suit, it was like being a guard at Buckingham Palace, on your feet, stand to attention, back straight, this was going to be some 12 hour shift!! Of course being resourceful sorts we quickly worked out that wooden top spent most of the night in his office. His office of course needed a guard and very soon the guard was doing a grand job. Every time the wooden top or a minion set out on a tour of the office guard would press the transmit button on his radio. This would cause every radio in the building to "click", everywhere there would be people jumping up off chairs hurriedly putting their book away. So by the time they came round the place was gleaming. Para popped over for a visit and a look around, it took him a whole 5 minutes to work out what was going on. Wooden top was sat with him in the canteen  telling him what a tight ship he was running here,  a load of us sat at the next table looking innocent. Para tried to conceal quite obvious amusement.

It really was daft though, there were three lifts in the building controlling access to the various floors. All three had to be guarded, including the one with a big sign saying "out of order".  Of course there weren't really three, there were four, when he did his security plan he didn't think to ask anyone about layout so the 4th lift was untended until someone had a "whats behind this door" moment and found it.

The security staff were a curious mix of ex services and public service together with people pulled off the street or from unemployment, with some very strange sorts thrown in. On night one, one of these types who was a bit of a self styled unarmed combat guru decided to show me how dangerous our uniform was, how it was a strangulation tool. He did this by demonstration, lunged at me when I was not expecting it and tried to strangle me with my ID lanyard, he looked really surprised as I did breakaway.

But enough of him for now, in the next episode he reveals himself as really dangerous.
 
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