Supt Dave Roney, deputy national co-ordinator, protect and prepare, gave a perspective from Nactso (National Counter Terrorism Security Office) headquarters to the UK Security Expo last week.
He stressed how the landscape has changed, in terms of the threat from terrorism after the attacks in Nice and Brussels and others, and the response around protecting individuals and infrastructure. The span and breadth of the threat is unprecedented, he said.
Roney, who drew one of the largest audiences of the conference talks at the London two-day show, replying to a question from the floor about the ‘run-hide-tell’ official advice about active shooters, was emphatically against giving to the UK the US advice of ‘run-hide-fight’. Roney quoted the Human Rights Act (HRA): “There is no way we would tell people to fight,” because of the provision in the HRA of the right to life. He admitted that there could be circumstances when it could be very difficult not to run and hide, ‘but that is our message’.
One piece of American security management that the UK does look like borrowing from is the OSAC (Overseas Security Advisory Council – Bureau of Diplomatic Security), the US federal briefings for US businesses operating abroad. Roney spoke of how Nactso hopes to offer something ‘a little bit like that’ for UK businesses; some online, some through face to face briefings, and some telephone-briefings and leaflets: “But it’s very much in our plans.”
At the Counter-Terror Expo in April, Roney announced a roll-out of Project Griffin terrorism and hostile reconnaissance awareness training; instead of it being given by police officers, private business trainers could be accredited to give the training, with the aim of Griffin reaching far more people, security and non-security alike, in front of house and retail for example. Nactso is hoping for Griffin to reach one million people a year, instead of the past thousands. Another similar training scheme, Argus, is also going through a review, Roney said.
Roney went through ‘game changing’ developments in the last couple of years, and their impact on UK counter-terrorism, from the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris to the Sharm el Sheikh airline bomb, Brussels airport and subway attacks of March 2016, the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in June, and the Nice lorry attack of July 2016 (‘who would have thought that a vehicle could cause so much carnage). The North Greenwich Underground attack of October 20, 2016, was a ‘reminder’, Roney told the audience.
For Nactso advice; visit its website.
About the UK Security Expo
The 2017 event, again over two days at London Olympia, runs on November 29 and 30.
See also the January 2017 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
