Police Security Threats

1. Introduction

Government law enforcement officers, also referred to as security guards or soldiers, mandated to protect high ranking personnel, celebrities, or even wealthy people are referred to as bodyguards. In Government, high ranking personnel may include head of governments, head of states, governors, ministers, and senators among others. Such high ranking public officers may also be referred to as Very Important Persons (VIPs) and their security referred to as VIP’s security detail. VIP’s security detail may consist of a team of security officers from security forces, agencies, or even police forces. For instance, in the US, such VIP’s security detail is drawn from the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service or the United States

In this regard, VIP’s security detail has to be up to task to protect the leaders of their countries. To ensure this, VIP’s security details have been trained on various responses as far as terrorism threats are concerned (Keeney & Von Winterfeldt, 2010). In this paper, a number of such threats on country leaders are examined while outlining security details’ potential response to each of the threat.

2. Terrorism threats and VIP’s security detail potential responses

Given the recent attacks on world leaders and civilians, a number of threats have been categorized differently. Some of such threats includes apartment bombs, bio-terrorism, improvised explosive device, mail attacks, misinformation, nuclear and ‘dirty’ bombs, sniper attack, suicide attacks, train and vehicle attacks and water terrorism. These are discussed in detail while noting potential responses by the VIP’s security details.

2.1. Apartment

Bio-terrorism

Biological warfare is a very complicated kind of attack which has been used over the years. It involves use of dangerous organic materials like diseases, viruses, and bacterium to cause harm to the public (Kirkup, 2013). For instance, it is claimed that in mid-1700s, British soldiers spread smallpox by distributing infected blankets during French/Indian wars. Terrorists have adopted this kind of attack as witnessed in 1984 when eleven salad bars were contaminated with bacteria, infecting 750 people salmonella in The Dalles, Oregon.

This type of attack is quite complex and requires that the VIP’s security detail consists of officers from all fields of knowledge including biologists. In this regard, every meal, water, drinks, and so on the VIP takes is examined and tested to make sure it safe for consumption. In most instances, the security detail sleeps and eats the same meal as their bosses to make sure that everything is safe for consumption. Even the air around the residences of such VIPs is monitored closely to curb the effect. In cases where the VIP is infected, the medical stuff is readily available for