United Kingdom: Security debacle at the Olympics

The security firm contracted to provide 17,000 guards announced that it would fall short of its target.

Security for the London Olympics is a mess of disorganization and ineptitude, said Simon Hoggart in The Guardian. G4S, the security firm contracted to provide 17,000 guards, announced last week that it would not be able to train enough guards in time, and now the government is scrambling to provide at least 3,500 soldiers in addition to the thousands already deployed. All this just as more than a million people prepare to descend on the world’s most tempting terrorist target. How could the firm not have known until two weeks before the opening ceremony that it would fail to meet its contract? And why wasn’t the government regularly checking the firm’s progress? Both are at fault. It’s a “DNA-type scandal, as the two shambles twist round each other, interlocked in a death-embrace super-shambles unlike any we’ve seen.”

Even the guards G4S has trained are bumblers, said Stephen Wright and David Williams in the Daily Mail. To save money, the company hired thousands of teenagers and put them through the most rudimentary training, with a “no-fail” policy that certified even the most incompetent candidates. One whistle-blower who recorded some of the training sessions said recruits repeatedly failed to spot fake bombs during X-ray training, and one even missed a 9-millimeter pistol “stuffed in a test spectator’s sock.” Many can’t speak English.

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