The shooting in Las Vegas is just the latest in a series of devastating
attacks at large events. Whether you are planning for a festival, a concert, or
any other type of large event that attracts a lot of people, you need to put a
lot of thought into the security of your event. A lot of this has to do with
crowd control. With strategic pre-planning you can do your best to limit the
risk of violence at your next event.
Before you do anything else, once you start planning your
event you have to begin your threat and risk assessment. How do you even begin
to do this? First consider common threats, such as petty and minor crime and
weather. From there, branch out to consider more severe threats, such as active
shooters. Finally you need to consider other threat aspects. Could the event be
politically charged? What kind of crowd will be at the event? All these things
(and more) are things you must consider when planning an event. Remember that
the priority is keeping attendees safe, but you should also consider damage to
property while making this assessment.
Once you have finished your risk assessment you can begin
planning your security strategy. First you want to establish your perimeter.
This shows you what space you will have to work with. If it is an outdoor
event, what are the barriers of the event? How do you keep people in or out?
What are the risks both inside and outside this perimeter? You can form a
perimeter with something as basic as a crowd control barrier or fence; you just
have to make sure you have the staff and security around this perimeter to keep
it safe.
This brings us to the staff you and bringing on for the
event. Work with local police. Get their feedback about the area your event is
taking place in, and security threats they believe you may face. You may want
to hire private security. You want to give your staff all the information you
can. Have them assess the risks as well. Create a chain of command within these
security personnel to make things run more smoothly. If possible, hire security
staff that has worked with the venue and/or the type of event you are running
before.
Providing some sort of cover in the event of a shooting can
also be helpful. We aren’t suggesting you put up barriers to hide behind, but
one of the reasons the Las Vegas attack was so fatal was because the shooter acted
from up high with an open-air target. Keep this in mind when considering a
large, open-air event. You also want to prevent cover from a vehicle attack.
Unfortunately, criminals driving into groups of people on sidewalks is becoming
more common, but this can be prevented with barriers to give your guests
coverage.
Outside of crowd control barriers and metal detectors, one
of the best and most cost-effective things you can do is train staff and
volunteers to recognize suspicious behavior. You can also encourage attendees
to report any strange behavior to event security, which puts many more eyes out
there. Hopefully this will lead to suspicious individuals being stopped and
prevent an attack from happening.
If something does go wrong, you want to have an evacuation
plan in place. While you are not likely to tell each attendee this plan, what
is important is that all staff and security knows about the plan. You need to
have a specific plan in place, and not just a generic evacuation plan. At a
seated venue there are clear exits, but at a festival there are not. This is
something you have to consider in case of emergency. Make sure all your staff
understands your emergency plan and that they know how to execute it if
something goes wrong.
No matter what you do to plan, it is impossible to guarantee
that nothing will go wrong at your event. That’s why it is important not only
to attempt to prevent an attack, but to have a plan in place in case something does
go wrong. Prepare the best you can and be ready to handle a situation if
violence does break out.
