Pointers for VIP Security

The high-profile assassinations of politicians brought to the fore the effectiveness of bodyguards or security personnel.  It can be noted that all the victims have some form of security detail when they were assassinated.  As such, the questions that behoove answering for many people in similar circumstances are how effective the bodyguards are and how big or small the security detail must be.  Well if you are the President of the Philippines, that is not a problem because the law mandates a specialized unit to provide protection.  But how about for ordinary folks like us?  The Police Security and Protection Office is the unit of the PNP that provides close-in security to qualified private individuals.  The applicant must just prove the presence of a threat against his/her life to avail of the services.  Private security agencies with Executive Protection License can also provide security at cost.  By law, only two bodyguards can be hired at a time.

But more than the numbers, another question that arose was the competence and qualifications of those providing close protection services.  In one case that was caught on video and is now viral on the internet, after the principal was shot by a sniper, everybody scampered in different directions—including the bodyguards.  The other two cases caught on camera were textbook examples of surveillance detection failure which we had extensively discussed in previous issues.  In one case, the VIP was leaving a government office and had stopped outside of the gate prior to turning to the national highway.  It was at this instant that he was attacked and as caught on camera, the guard manning the gate even closed the control boom, shutting the possible escape route of the VIP.  More than anything else, the incident demonstrated the universal validity of our earlier discussions about personal attacks.  It will happen in a place where you are predictable or you had a pattern (the VIP stayed long enough in the government office to set up the attack). The site affords control of the victim (the place was just outside the gate of the office which makes the stop mandatory as the road outside is a national highway). The victims’ attention may be distracted (most probably, the victims were thinking of making the safe entry to the national highway rather than the probability of a gun attack.  The same is true with the other attacks save for some minor variations.

So what do we recommend to people who may be under threat?  The recent incidents revealed that assassins are now not confined to riding in tandem modus.  There is now the sniper option that was used effectively for several times already.  However, no matter what the variations were, the attacks all followed the same general pattern:  surveillance, execution, and escape.  In the sniper case, there was information that stated that for several Mondays prior to the attack, residents in the nearby communities observed men who were taking positions in the grassy knoll beside the cemetery.  Without any training in surveillance detection, they simply did not mind what they observed.  In all these scenarios, the awareness, avoidance, and action template that we had been advocating could have been put to good use.

To refresh once again, these are:

Awareness does not simply mean detecting the presence of a man with a gun.  Rather, it includes awareness of the surroundings, especially of the possible locations for the attack.  Most importantly, awareness includes the knowledge of what to look for (correlation to your movement and other surveillance indicators), where to look for it (in your choke point), and when to look for it (during routine movements).  And lastly, the most important cog in awareness is the Boss.  The VIP himself must be aware of these principles to be able to continuously remind his protective personnel about surveillance detection measures, especially in critical areas.

Avoidance is the natural consequence of awareness.  Once the threat is identified and detected, the next logical step for the VIP is to avoid the attack by not providing the most important component of an attack—the VIP himself!

Action is the all-encompassing term for VIP security protection.  It sums up the first two components of awareness and avoidance.  In the event that the indicators of an attack were not detected, the VIP must be able to detect the early warning indicators of the attack and act accordingly.

Note: This article was previously published in the printed issue of The Corporate, Guide and Style for Professionals Magazine.