Call Security was a 50-minute documentary on BBC1 on Tuesday night, March 24, showing in a sympathetic light the varied and full work done by UK private security men and women. You can watch the programme on the BBC iPlayer.
The man photographed on the BBC iPlayer page is Dave Jordan, owner of the Barnet, north London-based guarding firm ProForce1Security, which offers services including police-style patrolling – or rather, what we once though of as police-style patrolling, only thanks to police austerity cuts, police no longer do (or are seen to do) such patrolling. Instead – and this was one of the themes of the documentary – private security firms are filling the gaps, and meeting people’s needs, left by police.
The documentary will be fully reviewed in the May print issue of Professional Security. Briefly: also featured was the trainee bodyguard and former Widnes rugby league player Tom Wood-Hulme, who passed a close protection course including weapons training, in Prague, seeking a career in CP beyond door work; how Lincolnshire Police are using G4S detention custody officers to keep police on patrol rather than diverted to the police station by paperwork whenever they arrest someone; Sid Arora of the Chatham, Kent-based door security contractor Deadline Security; and Naj Hussain of Stoke on Trent based CBI Security. Those last two were each shown stewarding separate boxing nights in Kent and Stoke respectively; in each they had to deal with men – and women – in the audience being aggressive and violent.
Besides boxing promotions, another relatively seldom covered subject was the security of small tradesmen; one unidentified Middlesbrough shopkeeper showed his 16-camera CCTV system, upped from eight after a burglary had revealed blind spots. He also showed to camera a knife he kept for protection, and added: “I definitely think about getting a firearm, purely for hunting purposes only, nothing more.”
The TV programme was by Wild Productions, directed by Richard Wyllie and produced by Eloise King. The documentary made such points as there are more than twice as many security officers as police; and over 340,000 people in Britain have a private security SIA licence.
If you saw the programme and itch to be on the screen in the next documentary of that sort, wonder how to get in front of the makers? As ever, it appears that it’s who you know – or who the researchers look for – that matters. Note on Deadline Security’s website that Sid Arora’s company does TV and film work; likewise Dave Jordan’s firm began with film and TV work, and crowd control at media events.
