Alleviation of Security threats during Mass Events – A Private Perspective
By Jerome Divin
Mass events often harbour considerable amounts of security threats both to individuals and property. With masses flocking to one location, organized or not, criminals find the perfect way to masquerade themselves due to the sheer size of the crowds itself. Amongst the crowd and confusion, it is often rare to detect a criminal. In order for you to prevent any accidents or avoidable incidents, it is wise to consider crowd security.
Event Security is an integral part of every event planning professional’s agenda. If you are investing time and money into the success of the event, surely event security should take one of the top priorities. It is generally a security service that helps you organize your crowds, check for harmful items or illegal materials, ensure the safety of the hosts, guests, and participants and provide emergency response services as well. These security service individuals are trained exclusively to help you maintain the overall order of your events.
Here’s a run-down of how Event Security will help you:
As discussed earlier, we know that security is often at stake for any event organized wherein a good number of individuals are involved. These individuals may range from important political figures, celebrities, royalties, to common civilians. These events may further range from small-scale fairs to high-profile weddings and public debates. Sporting events and even marathons require a fair amount of security, here’s why:
- You should always consider in organising event security personnel to prevent planned public disturbances and nuisances.
- The threat of individuals bringing in and utilising weaponry, licensed or not, can be greatly reduced through pat downs and security checks at all entrances.
- Furthermore, if there is a case of use of any weapons, there is assured emergency response services and first response teams at hand to offer:
o Crowd control
o Stopping, identifying and/or locating the perpetrator(s)
o Disarming any perpetrators and preventing any more
o Disarming a relevant weapon if located
o Safe evacuation
- If you are hosting an event that does not involve entry only to certain individuals listed off of a guestlist, maintaining order of the crowd is crucial as thousands of people will be attracted to the same location.
- If your event does, in fact, involved invited guests, event security individuals help in making sure there are no ID thefts (through cyberspace) and misidentification involved.
- If your event involves online databases and information stores through or on the internet, certain specialized event security professionals may be able to help you keep them secure.
A Private Standpoint
In the last decade, the private security area has seen a considerable rise. Particularly in regions such as the United Kingdom, Honduras, South Africa, Kurdistan, India, and parts of the European Union. As per an authoritative report from the Reuters, the private security field is involved in employing twice as many officers and individual as compared to governments with police officers. Of course reliance on the government’s law and justice systems are still strong, however, what does this spike in private security firms have to offer to the general public? Are there any added advantages to preferring private companies to provide security for your events? Here’s a bit of what I can tell you.
In countries like India, the several private security firms have not really secured critical sectors; they’re only handling tasks for the more non-critical sectors. It is the government’s police officials that extend their services to events that are high-profile only and involves famous and/or influential names, usually involves in politics or showbiz. These police officers can be employed to manage and tend to their basic and core responsibilities that are involved in the law enforcement fields otherwise. This is a stark difference as to how non-policing activities are looked after by private security firms in most parts of the world.
This logic can be applied anywhere, wherein, hiring private security personnel for mass events drastically reduces the number of officers required from the government’s law enforcement units.
Another advantage could be the fact that private security personnel has respective dedicated codes of conduct that will allow you to perfectly plan your security arrangements for events. Not only that, private firms can collaboratively work with police officers as well for incredibly large scale and/or sate to nation-wide events.
Conclusion:
To conclude, we have understood how event security handles crowd security and how private security firms provide the most optimal services for the same as it allows police officers to focus on their core duties. Seeking the assistance of a private security firm to provide event security at your next event is certainly a recommendation to be added on top of your planning priorities.