Interviews

May 2016 issue

by Mark Rowe

Now available, the May 2016 print issue of Professional Security magazine. Event and crowd security are featured heavily; after a conference by the training company eResponse Crowd Safety Training. That heard from the stewarding and VIP and event security veteran Dr Mick Upton who recalled ‘a long hot summer’s day’ securing a free concert by the Rolling Stones in the 1960s in Hyde park. While that might sound exciting and romantic, at the time it was anything but as – a sign of the sheer ignorance of the era about security and crowd safety – the concert organisers had employed Hells Angles as front of stage security. Mick recalled spending more time pacifying the Hells Angels (who, incredibly by modern standards, had been paid in beer) than anything else.

Also covered at the event was football hooliganism – an academic suggesting that stewarding and security professionals at matches should attend to crowd dynamics, and how the actions of those in authority have an effect on the ‘hooligans’ – and a former senior manager from the 2012 Olympics, Heather McGill, the ‘head of spectator experience’ at the London Games, who offered the intriguing suggestion that if a steward or security officer joins in the spirit of an event by breaking out into a dance pitchside, that is what the event organisers may want – and may soon be the difference between you keeping a contract and not, as events (in a competitive market) seek to offer an ever-better and more memorable experience to customers, beyond a merely safe and secure one.

Mick is pictured left at a tea break at the event, at the National Motorcycle Museum, near Solihull and the NEC, with Andy Hollinson of eResponse.

We bring you words and pictures from our excursion to Dublin, for our first Security TWENTY event in Ireland, in April, that all agreed went down well with visitors and exhibitors alike. Among the speakers was a trainer and pilot of drones, warning of a likely terror use. We also report from the recent Gadget Show Live, and the BAPCO conference of public sector communications managers, on the benefits and risks of drone use. Also on terrorism, we report after the Brussels terror attacks of March.

Plus all the usual features – MD Roy Cooper’s gossip, the four pages of new products and services, our regular columnists Una Riley (who reports from the annual giant ISC West show at Las Vegas) and Jim Gannon, four pages of ‘spending the budget’, book review page, and pages by and about networked security, and installers.

To read the monthly issues going back years, visit the ‘magazine‘ section of our website.

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