At close quarters

All the armour plating in the world will not protect a vehicle’s occupants from persistent attack. Even the most heavily armoured vehicle will succumb eventually if its attackers are determined enough. It’s therefore a fundamental principle of driver training – and crucial for the occupants’ safety – to keep the vehicle moving and thus escape the potential ‘killing zone’.

Sadly, there are numerous examples of cases when executives, VIPs or their drivers have not adhered to this basic rule and have paid the ultimate price. Conversely, a number of high profile individuals have benefited from good security staff training. One example is President Musharaff of Pakistan who has now evaded several attempts on his life, two of which were thwarted by the quick-thinking of his driver who sped through an ambush in spite of significant damage to the vehicle.

Driver training and close protection training should be mandatory for any employee working or living in a city, region or country with diminished law and order. The increased risk from organised crime, direct action groups and terrorism means that a growing number of executives, both in the UK and abroad, are potentially at risk. That being the case, whomever is in charge of security at the company must take the basic steps to ensure their personal safety.

Although the threat facing most executives will be comparatively low level, companies need to take more seriously the benefits of driver and close protection training. Indeed, most companies must remember they have a Duty of Care to their employees to ensure that they are properly prepared before and during a trip abroad. Failure to offer adequate preparatory training or suitable insurance cover can be seen as a failure in adherence to that Duty of Care, leaving them open to potentially damaging law suits.

With threats to executives ranging from the loss of control of a vehicle on a poor road surface through to car-jacking, kidnappings or car bombs, it’s crucial that close protection personnel are prepared for the unexpected.

Not everybody needs the skills of President Musharaff’s driver but, for instance, advanced tactical driver training courses can offer essential driving skills to both executives and their close protection officers.

In practice, these courses can include everything from instinctive driving techniques, defensive driving and evasive driving through to situational awareness training and close protection tactical driving.

Turning theory into practice

The best courses available offer students a wide range of training vehicles to allow them to become familiar with different types, from unmodified Vauxhall Omegas to up-armoured and sports utility vehicles. The courses are taught by highly experienced Special Forces instructors, and participants are afforded numerous opportunities to turn theory into practice before their instruction is complete.

Courses can also include hostile environment awareness training which prepares clients who are going to hazardous environments to recognise and avoid potential threats and equip them, if necessary, to respond to any type of incident. Lessons include the importance of travel pattern analysis, surveillance detection and attack recognition, all of which are key to mitigating the potential threats faced by executives.

However, with the current boom in ‘celebrity culture’ there are concerns that not all close protection courses meet Best Practice standards. Certain experts also fear that the trend among some who view close protection as a glorified fashion statement could undermine its reputation altogether.

For close protection courses to attain Security Industry Authority (SIA) accreditation, they need to run for at least 150 hours before a student can be given a ‘licence to operate’. Therefore, security officers looking to develop their careers, company executives about to be posted overseas and Human Resources managers seeking original team building opportunities should enrol on an SIA-approved driver training and close protection course.

Protecting the load

Another area where drivers need to be adequately trained for security is in transporting high value goods. Most Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) travel without any outward sign of their contents, but the criminals know there are high value loads and that there’s a lucrative black market waiting if a few lorries can be diverted to Thieves’ Row.

Most loads have no intrinsic value to anyone other than their intended recipient, but some carry highly portable assets that attract the acquisitive attention of the country’s criminal fraternity. Mobile telephones, satellite navigation aids, camcorders, computer equipment and processors, CDs, DVDs, pre-release video games and blockbuster movies – all of these fall into the ‘high risk’ category.

Many hijackings take place within close proximity to the point of departure. A typical scenario will see the driver take the load from a secure warehouse out onto the open roads where, within a few minutes, he will be intercepted at traffic lights, a roundabout or similar ‘choke point’, threatened with his life (or the lives of members of his family), stripped of his money and mobile telephone, possibly bound and gagged and deposited at the roadside while his lorry’s cargo vanishes into the distance with no-one any the wiser. This entire process takes but a few minutes.

With threats to executives ranging from the loss of control of a vehicle on a poor road surface through to car-jacking, kidnappings or car bombs, it’s crucial that close protection personnel are prepared for the unexpected

Wholesale theft of the vehicle complete with load is not the only tactic used. Indeed, statistics point to the fact that a far more common technique is the ‘jump-up’ theft, where the load is partly or wholly removed from a stationary vehicle. Often, the curtain is slashed and opportunistic thieves grab what they can easily remove. ‘Round-the-corner’ stings are operations where the driver is duped into delivering goods to the wrong location.

Personal injury to drivers

Thankfully, personal injury to the driver is a rare event, but it’s churlish to think that a hijacking is anything other than a traumatic and horrifying occurrence for the individual being assaulted. It’s a far bigger deal than an ‘occupational hazard’, but there’s a strong sense that the carrier’s Duty of Care to its drivers falls a distressing distance down the pecking order when the risk assessment is being done. In fact, most risk assessments are conducted on the basis of value, and it’s commonplace for carriers to refer this analysis back to their customers – the manufacturers or distributors of the goods in question. The further the owner of this process is removed from the journey itself, the less likely it is the driver’s welfare will be a major consideration.

No criminal gang wants to risk their liberty for a load that potentially has no value, so they invest substantially in their own intelligence (learning as much as possible about dates, departure times, destinations and loads).

Where does the information come from? Operation Grafton – the specialist Police Unit established to tackle high value freight crime within the supply chain industry connected with Heathrow Airport – relies heavily on intelligence from a variety of sources to combat this type of crime. These sources include drivers, warehouse and office staff. The police service stresses that many crimes “are the result of non-compliance with company security and verification procedures”.

The only way for the security industry and the police to respond to the threat is to continue to invest in our own intelligence sources and to develop operational methodologies that deter attack and bolster the confidence of carriers and drivers alike.

Multi-person security teams

The price-driven motivation to save money by employing single-manned escorts needs to be resisted. On an incident-free short-distance run it can appear – with hindsight – that double-manning the escort is excessive, but this ignores the operational and Health and Safety imperatives applicable to every escort – no matter duration, destination, route or load.

A team of two escort officers allows for Duty of Care obligations to be fulfilled to the driver and the officers themselves, in the event of incident, accident or illness. It allows one officer to concentrate on driving while the other focuses on observation, supervision, communication and route-planning, etc.

The most potent arrangement is to escort a load with an overt vehicle, a covert vehicle maintaining a constant close contact observation and a motorcycle outrider who can be used to ‘buzz’ about the convoy, clearing junctions, intersections and roundabouts before the load arrives and seeing it through. This combination is expensive, even as a one-off, and would typically only be used when the load value and risk assessments are extreme.

GPS tracking: a ‘must have’ feature

GPS tracking is a must-have feature of every escort, with trackers fitted to either the load vehicle or secreted within the load itself. Tracked on computerised mapping software in a permanently staffed, dedicated Control Room, the progress of the load can be monitored in real-time and the entire route audited during or after the event.

The GPS software allows for a technique known as geo-fencing, where routes can be plotted and ‘fenced-off’ so that any deviation from the pre-approved route will trigger an alert. Unscheduled stops or excessive speeds can also trigger alerts.

Given that most hijacks, interceptions or cases of theft from warehouses are thought to be the result of inside information, it’s critically important that no-one has access to route information prior to (or during) the escort itself. The best way to avoid this is to pre-plan several routes and then allow the security convoy commander to make a decision on the route to be used only once the driver briefing is complete, all means of communication have been removed from the load vehicle and the convoy is rolling from the yard.

The acquisition and preservation of contemporaneous evidence is vitally important. Thus state-of-the-art, digitally recorded and time- and date-stamped CCTV is a prerequisite, as indeed will be recorded communications. These preserve evidence in the event of a crime being committed.