Protecting iconic institutions


up on the roof of the police station. Thankfully, only one person was injured. It could have been much worse. Due to the ‘misinformation’, most of our police officers were at Paddington Railway Station searching and clearing that.


This incident certainly taught me a few lessons in security and self-preservation! Respect explosives, or suspect devices, and create distance. Never automatically believe everything you are told. It might be false. It might be mistaken. Assume nothing, believe no one and check everything. Explosions are nothing like they are in the movies. I was never again blasé when dealing with suspect devices.


As Paddington Green was the high security police station, it regularly housed IRA and other terrorist prisoners. As gaoler I would see them, up close, in the flesh as I carried out my duties, which included giving them food and cups of tea. They looked like very ordinary people, incredibly ordinary and nothing like what I thought a terrorist would look like. Come to think of it, I never arrested a burglar in a stripy jumper either! Another valuable security lesson: criminals, terrorists and those up to no good just look exactly like everyone else.


Royalty protection


cott Hamer, Head of Security and Resilience at St. Paul’s Cathedral and former personal protection officer to HM The King (as HRH The Prince of Wales), discusses his security career and the nuances of protecting and securing iconic people and institutions.


S Initial career path


I started my security career in 1992 as a police constable in the Metropolitan Police, serving at Paddington Green Police Station. The early and mid 90s saw a heavy bombing campaign in London from the IRA and dealing with bomb threats, suspicious


devices and real IEDs became as routine as dealing with thefts, assaults and accidents. In fact, I witnessed my first explosion only a couple of months out of Hendon Training School. One Saturday morning, just before nine o’clock, we received a coded bomb threat from the IRA stating that a bomb had been planted at Paddington Station. This was shortly followed by one of my sergeants on the radio saying he wasn’t happy with a bag he had found in the telephone box outside the police station.


I saw a couple of my colleagues arrive in that area and they started to clear the street. At 0900hrs exactly I saw the bomb explode and felt the blast slap me on my chest. If my sergeant hadn’t found that bomb, I would have been walking past it at the exact time it exploded. The surrounding shop windows were blown in, a couple of my colleagues were knocked off their feet and the roof of the telephone box ended


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In 2000 I applied to join Specialist Operations 14 (SO14), more commonly referred to as Royalty Protection. I passed all the tests and in January 2001 I found myself on my Reactive Protection (Bodyguard) Course at a former RAF base to the west of London. It was two weeks and very long days of ‘conflict management’, unarmed combat, one- handed shooting, performance under pressure and encountering every other conceivable attack against the person one could possibly imagine. It certainly wasn’t an easy course and a couple of people were lost along the way due to injuries. Having passed that, I awaited my VIPER course, internally referred to as ‘the knives and forks course’. This brought us back down to reality and prepared us for reality and the 99% of the role – planning and preparation, reconnaissance, multi-tasking, teamwork, briefings, coping with last- minute changes, etc. This culminated in a final exercise looking after a ‘VIP’ for three whole days.


I remember our final exercise well. Whilst I was one of the CPOs waiting outside the Tate Gallery on 11 September 2001 we heard the news about the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. When I reported the news to my colleague over the radio he questioned whether this was part of the scenario!


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