CSARN

SRM Update / Met Police, Major exercise in central London

 

 

 

 

 

22nd February 2012

Surrey Street, London, WC2R between the Strand and Temple Place

0700 - 1900

On 22nd February the Emergency Services and partners will be taking part in an exercise to test responses to an incident on the underground system.  This will include an emergency response by the Met, British Transport Police, London Fire Brigade and London Ambulance Service at the disused Aldwych tube station.

To facilitate the exercise Surrey Street, WC2R will be closed between the Strand and Temple Place from 0700 until 1900 on 22nd February.

The exercise is part of a National counter terrorism exercise programme, run by the Home Office, but is a key part of the testing of the readiness for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.  For further information about this exercise visit met.police.uk

If you have any further questions please email communitiestogether@met.police.uk or call 0207 230 4014.

Any press enquires should be made to the Metropolitan Police Service Press Bureau on 020 7230 2171.

CSARN SRM / Counter-terror profile for Olympic Borough shows concerns over would-be jihadists; local negative sentiment also a growing issue

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In this period the Counter-Terrorism Local Profile (CTLP) for Waltham Forest, one of the six Olympic boroughs, was leaked. The document identifies a high level of concern over al-Qaeda’s ability to inspire males aged 20-38, predominantly British born second/third generation South Asian migrants. Signs of “jihadi cool” have been reported in local gangs, mostly made up of youths from the aforementioned communities, and the perception of deprivation within the Pakistani community is particularly highlighted. Concerns over penetration by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and other North African jihadist movements, as well as political movements such as Hizb-ut Tahrir, were also in evidence.

This fits with our previous assessment that a lone wolf jihadist attack remains one of the most serious security concerns around the games. However, the report also mentions growing right-wing extremism – itself in part a response to the growing radicalisation of

CSARN SRM / Increasing focus on Occupy movement as a potential threat; agenda, constituency and international background implies disruption highly likely

The last edition of the Monitor published details of a threat by Fathers for Justice against the rowing at Eton Dorney. Single-issue groups have taken on more prominence in this period, with increased discussion over the Occupy movement as a potential threat. This is in part due to the Home Secretary’s comments at a recent conference, at which she indicated that measures were being taken to add tents and other camping equipment to the list of banned items for Olympic venues. Further targeted actions are expected in an attempt to prevent the movement from significantly affecting the games.

Given the continued anti-consumerist agenda of the Occupy movement, and the trend towards the conflation of animal, environmental and human liberation as causes, Occupiers certainly do pose a very real threat, which may tie up significant security effort despite the anticipated pre-emptive moves (see later in this Report). Whilst the UK movement seems largely focused on attempting to maintain physical occupations as a symbol of the movement, US groups have embraced the “Occupy 2.0” trend of more adaptive, innovative and targeted roving protests. Whilst efforts to move Occupiers out of existing camps will almost certainly be aggressively pursued over the coming weeks, the point is that the loss of permanent encampments does not equal the negation of the threat – in fact the converse is possible, since losing the focus on a particular piece of ground actually allows the movement to be more agile and original in direct actions.

Further reports of planned single issue activist activity against the Olympic Games

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We have previously mentioned our assessment that single issue activism is likely to lead to attempts to disrupt the games. In this period several events have underlined this threat:

• Local protests have continued against Dow Chemical, a sponsor that is being targeted due to a predecessor company’s culpability for the Bhopal industrial disaster that killed and maimed people in India.
• Fathers for Justice, the pressure group campaigning for father’s rights to children when families split up, has threatened to carry out attention-grabbing direct actions during the rowing at Eaton Dorney (one of the four main sites outside London, where attention is likely due to Team GB’s track record, and where access may be easier).
  
  
• A 'Counter Olympics Network' has been formed by various threat actors, and this is engaged in producing various anti-games material on social media. It has also organised a protest conference on 28 January. The London anarchist collective group 'ALARM' have advertised this conference on their website, giving it credence, and the issue is also understood to have been discussed at that group’s own recent conference.

This last point suggests that some anti-capitalist planning discussion is beginning, which may yet tie into developments related to the Occupy movement. We believe that this could yet emerge into a seriously disruptive issue, and so will continue to report on this trend.

Reported explosives-related breaches of Olympic site cause security concerns, although lessons learned from main incident will have improved effectiveness; role of dogs highlighted

Security breaches have taken on prominence in this period, with two explosives-related incidents drawing headlines:

• In early January it was revealed that security procedures in place at the Olympic Park have been successful in stopping 90% of explosives penetration exercises. Whilst this was portrayed as a positive move and trumpeted a high success rate, numerous observers immediately and accurately noted that this means a 10% failure rate – so in spite of security measures applied at least one dummy device made it onto the site, which is already in pre-games lockdown mode.
• On 13 January it was further revealed that a lorry carrying 20kg of ammonium nitrate (a component for so-called fertilizer bombs) was passed as okay by a canine detection team. It was later intercepted by a manual search.

These incidents have attracted predictable levels of criticism. Penetration testing is however normal procedure and the aim is of course to show up any vulnerabilities in the...