World Cup security: Guard labor strike was a game changer

Security expert Ty Richmond says officials have risen to challenges in the last several days. But security guards walking off the job was an unforseen blow to World Cup planners.

By , Senior Editor

June 21, 2010 — CSO —

Before the FIFA World Cup had even officially started earlier this month, a pregame event made headlines after the crowd in attendance stampeded the gates and became unruly because many were denied attendance due to the authenticity of their tickets.

As the tournament kicked off, CSOonline talked to Andrews International's Bill Besse about the kinds of advance work necessary to keep clients safe as they attend the games. (Read that interview here.) But only a few days into the tournament, the game changed when a dozen or more security guards walked off the job in a labor strike only hours before the Brazil-North Korea match.

With these and other incidents, the tone has been set: Security at the event will be in the spotlight over the next several weeks.

CSO checked in with Ty Richmond, chief operating officer of Andrews International, for more insight into the guard situation.

CSO: What were your thoughts when you heard about the pregame rush on the stadium that took place even before the tournament had begun?

Ty Richmond: There was an expectation that there would be some fine tuning of some of the issues relative to basic processes and systems. In an event of this magnitude on a global scale there is always the issue of insuring you have valid tickets that are not counterfeit and legitimate access control. Those are fundamentally part of security controls for everyone that needs to be in restricted areas.

In this particular case, there was an expectation that there would be some quality control over time. What I think was unexpected was on peripheral of event and on the outer layer that you would have labor issues that have come into play to the effect that they have.

That does not have 100 percent impact of what is happening in the stadium. Early on, there were some legitimate breakdowns that were just a matter of recognition of the problem and correction of it. People went into this with an understanding that there were some challenges you would not typically have in an advanced, progressive security culture which you don't have here. You just don't have that in South Africa. You have to work with a lot of elements you aren't used to dealing with in a much more westernized system of controls.

What are your thoughts on the security guard strike?

Andrews International has been providing security services to a top tier sponsor of the event. None of the company's personnel were involved in the strike - those participating were from vendors in the South Africa region. In any event of this magnitude, the human is the human element. You are going to have to deal with the fact that there is a level of coordination and communication that need to be worked throughout on the front end and very quickly in these types of events.

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