Why more leaders don’t get shot: a close protection officer reveals the tricks of the trade
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Earlier this week, the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, was shot at close range five times while greeting the crowd after an off-site government meeting in the town of Handlova.
This is one of the most difficult situations a protection officer can find himself in – and I should know. I started life in close protection in 1996 when I transferred from the Parachute Regiment to the Royal Military Police solely to do their special protection course. Over the course of my career I have looked after British ambassadors, members of parliament, defence and command staff and members of the Royal Family. I wrote the book on it.
It’s the job of any close protection officer to identify a threat to their principal – the person they’re protecting – but situations like this one, where the principal has to mingle with and be in close proximity to unknowns, is the hardest.
This crowd will have been unknown: not vetted, for the most part. In such a situation we don’t know who they are, and all we can do to engage with them is keep a close eye on their non-verbal communication: how they appear. Are they smiling, do they look happy or nervous?
Are they sweating? It’s all about the hands and eyes, every time – or, as we say in the business, the absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal. Behavioural assessment is quite a skill. But those of us who do it know the nuances: the strange human interactions and how to identify someone or a station that’s just not quite right. You could call it a sixth sense.
Should a close protection officer identify someone of interest, they will immediately communicate that information to someone already in the crowd – another protection officer – to go and intervene. Because an event like this one, planned in advance, will have covert operators mingling with the crowd. It’s their duty to identify suspicious behaviour – bags left alone, people preparing for or conducting any act that is out of the ordinary.
The other level of protection will have been carried out by an advance party clearing the route. That route will have been searched and sealed: drains, culverts, bridges along the way; bins taken away. And you might also have a tier in the air as well, monitoring the crowd with high-powered cameras; snipers and counter-snipers, counter-attack teams waiting in nearby roads to respond - all those multi layers. Not for this event in Slovakia, perhaps, but certainly for a big event in Britain, such as a jubilee.
If something does happen, as it did in Slovakia, the job of the close protection officer is not to fight the threat, but to get the boss out of the way. In a way, all protection officers must be cowards – we’re not there to advance contact but to grab the principal and get him out of there aggressively.
That’s why it’s important for security drivers to stay in vehicles with the engine running and nearby – because those vehicles are also armoured, and so they’re a safe haven. In the UK, an armoured vehicle can usually withstand a 7.62 – that is, a large-ish calibre round from an AK47, for example.
The driver and the team that deals directly with the principal can then get out of there, while a personal escort team, who will have travelled in a second car, can act as backup and stay to deal with the threat. I don’t like to be too critical, but in this situation you had the protection officers dealing with Fico getting him into the car and others pausing, seeming not to know exactly where to go, like rabbits caught in the headlights. But it must be instilled into you what your role or function is in the event of several different situations – and if you hear gunfire, you’ve got to know what you’re doing, because time is of the essence.
The way the Slovakians work looks to be quite similar to how we do things here in the UK. I’m slightly biased, being a Brit, but we’re much more discreet about how we do protection than, say, the Americans. Because they have huge budgets, they will flood an area: absolutely swamp it with manpower.
US protection officers have even started to take a special aggressive stance: they hold the lapels of their jacket, which means anyone can easily identify who is a US secret service agent, and it also provides them with an arguably quicker ability to access their firearm. The British will not do that because we view it as detrimental to the image of the person being protected.
There is an unwritten rule, if you’re protecting a royal or a minister, that if there is a TV camera, photographer, anything, you have to try your utmost not to be in that image. The Americans don’t care about things like that – they’re there to do a job, come hell or high water.
It’s illegal to carry a firearm if you’re protecting a private individual in the UK, but state protection officers will have two: a Glock pistol and a rifle, which will usually be held in the vehicle. With firearms being illegal for a private citizen in the UK, it does have a knock-on effect for the reduction of threat in comparison to America.
In Slovakia, you can only get a firearms licence if you own a valid hunting permit or are a state representative in sport shooting, with no criminal history and of sound health and mind, and you have to take an oral exam covering aspects of gun law and safe handling.
But you can’t always identify the threat. This man was 71 years old: he’s not the typical demographic. People are very easy to pigeonhole and stereotype. When you have someone out of that typical box suddenly appearing with a gun, it’s always going to be a surprise.
The big lesson from this whole episode? That anyone, regardless of sex or age could be a threat. We live in an increasingly dangerous world. And it is absolutely impossible to provide 100 per cent protection.
Richard J Aitch is a protective security specialist and author of The Close Protection Book
