Daily BrewLondon readies Olympics security with rooftop missiles, thousands of cops, soldiers
Security has become such an obsession with recent Olympic Games that it ought to be a medal event.
I covered the security side of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver for The Canadian Press, so I can tell you that next to building Olympic infrastructure, security is the top priority for organizers and governments of the host country.
The Vancouver security tab came to more than half a billion dollars to deploy 16,000 police, military, border agents and private security personnel, not to mention equipment to protect against attacks from the ground, sea and air.
But no one demanded Vancouverites play host to batteries of anti-aircraft rockets on their rooftops. Visiting athletes' families, sure. Rockets? No.
The flap over missiles being installed on the roofs of London residential buildings before the Summer Games begin on July 27 ended Tuesday when a British High Court judge rejected a challenge to the plan.
Judge Charles Haddon-Cave said the missiles presented "no real threat" to residents and were a necessary component of the Olympic security plan, The Associated Press reported.
The anti-aircraft missiles will be put on top of a 17-storey public housing project, one of six sites around the city. Another apartment building will get Rapier or smaller missiles, while the others will be sited at a reservoir, on farmland in east London and on hills south of the city, The AP said.
[Related: Far-reaching Olympic security measures leave Londoners with bad taste in their mouths]
The London Games' security force dwarfs what we saw in Vancouver, even considering the larger scale of a summer Olympics.
The Globe and Mail reported a total of 17,000 military personnel will be guarding venues or on standby, almost double the 9,500 troops Britain currently has in Afghanistan.
Another 3,500 soldiers were put on standby Wednesday, the Globe reported, bringing the military component to more than 20,000, bolstered by fighter jets, helicopters and warships.
There will be also be 12,000 police dedicated to the Games, and a private security firm has been contracted to provide 13,200 guards for 100 Olympic venues. In Vancouver, private security handled venue access and ticket verification.
That didn't stop a mentally disturbed man from getting within a few metres of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden during the Vancouver Games' opening ceremonies at B.C. Place Stadium. He got past the screeners using a crudely forged pass.
The British government ordered up extra soldiers after London Games security contractor G4S said it was having trouble getting enough people work as guards.
"This has been an unprecedented and very complex security recruitment, training and deployment exercise, which has been carried out to a tight timescale," G4S said in a statement.
"We have encountered some issues in relation to workforce supply and scheduling over the last couple of weeks, but are resolving these every day."
Pre-Olympic hiccups and jitters are not unusual. In Vancouver, the biggest security problem turned out to anarchist Black Bloc protesters who tried to provoke police at an anti-Olympic demonstration during the opening ceremonies and the next day went on a minor vandalism rampage downtown.
But London has real terrorism fears. It was targeted by the Irish Republican Army with bombs in the 1980s and Islamist suicide bombers killed 56 people and injured more than 700 others with a series of bombings on London's transit system July 7, 2005.
Last week, police arrested seven men and charged six of them with terrorism-related offences, though authorities said the case was not linked to the upcoming Games, The AP reported.
