[Blog] Safe Guard: Post Mumbai attacks, business for security agencies in Delhi is booming, as malls and hotels get serious about safety

For most five-star hotels, Decemb… http://s3nt.com/bm1x

Safe Guard

(My Original Blog Post: http://vickykapoor.com/photo-gallery/guard)

Post Mumbai attacks, business for security agencies in Delhi is booming, as malls and hotels get serious about safety

For most five-star hotels, December is a busy month, with year-end festivities and promotions. But December cheer hardly deterred Kamal Rana, chief of security at the Intercontinental Hotel, Nehru Place, from conducting a day-long building evacuation drill on the hotel premises involving all employees, even the HR personnel. “Earlier training was restricted to only security staff, now we have extended it to all employees,” says Rana. Next month, security training becomes more elaborate, with a fire and bomb drill. “We are seeking permission from authorities to have trained armed guards at the hotel entrance,” he adds. For this the hotel has sought help from Ultimate Tactical and Combat, a security agency in Delhi.

Security consultants in Delhi have seen business booming in the last month. Safety Circle, a training centre set up by the National Safety Council, USA, with a branch in Delhi are now conducting workshops for The Taj Hotel and Shangri La. The programme, called ‘Emergency Response Care’, involves practical lessons on basic life-saving skills like cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), how to deal with burns, fractures, heart attacks, poisoning and even fire. Training lasts eight hours and the course costs Rs 1,500 per person. Other hotels have settled on intensifying their existing security models. The Park on Parliament Street has begun weekly mock drills on fire safety and evacuation, reducing their response time to any crisis by five minutes. The Ambience Mall, Gurgaon, conducts fire drills once-a-month, which earlier, was done only once in three months. “We recently introduced bomb drills, involving all staff members and have assigned a group to handle each floor in a crisis. This was not done before,” says Anil Kumar, director, Sandalwood Mall Management, the agency that conducts safety workshops in Ambience Mall.

The Maurya, a hotspot for visiting dignitaries and nation heads, wants to seize this opportunity to train its employees, not just in security drills but also in soft skills like etiquette, while they are at it. They’ve outsourced it to Ultimate Tactical who are conducting a 40-hour ‘counter terrorism’ workshop for them, and several other clients in the hospitality sector. The programme for a group of about 30 people can cost anything between Rs 1.5 lakhs to 20 lakhs . Select Citywalk mall in Saket completed an internal three-week programme for its 4,500 employees on fire, terrorism and unlawful entry. “After 26/ 11, security has become part of our culture. So we drafted a plan on increasing the training for all employees,” says Rajiv Duggal, CEO, Select Mall who has assigned duties to every staff member in case of fire and a hostage crisis. Better safe than sorry.

[Blog] Safe Guard: Post Mumbai attacks, business for security agencies in Delhi is booming, as malls and hotels ge… http://s3nt.com/bm1x

Punjab cops may train Israeli-style

(My Original Blog Post: http://vickykapoor.com/photo-gallery/punjab-train-israeli-style)

The Asian Age

By Asit Jolly

Chandigarh

Jan. 5: The Punjab police is now seeking to better its anti-terrorist skills by re-training its commandos in advanced martial arts and equipping them with state-of-the-art weaponry.

Police commandos on chief minister Parkash Singh Badal’s 1,000-man security detail in Chandigarh, as well as others at the Punjab Armed Police academy at Jalandhar, were recently given live demonstrations of Krav Maga, a Czechoslovakian-Israeli unarmed combat technique employed by special forces across the world.

Staged by experts from the Israeli Krav Maga Federation (India), the demonstrations were a precursor to identifying physically and emotionally suited personnel to undertake advanced courses supervised by Israeli instructors.

“The idea is to arm our men with specialised skills that could prove far more efficient than pistols and AK-47s in the protection of VIPs,” said a senior police officer. He admitted that many Punjab police commandos constituted more of a threat than any security to the people they are supposed to protect. “There is always the possibility that motivated intruders could snatch a PSO’s weapon and use it on the protectee in crowds or other close-protection situations,” the officer said.

Mr Vicky Kapoor, who runs IKMF-India, insists “unarmed combat skills are the only solution on the street”. “Yes, a good weapon is important but even more critical is the man behind that weapon,” he said.

“As soon as we have a formal request, IKMF will commence an advanced Krav Maga course for a hand-picked group of Punjab police commandos,” Mr Kapoor said.

The police department has also initiated the process to acquire state-of-the-art weapons from a leading European vendor. Though still a very closely guarded secret, sources tell this newspaper the CM’s security detail could soon be brandishing new machine pistols and sniper rifles.

[Blog] Punjab cops may train Israeli-style: The Asian Age

By Asit Jolly

Chandigarh

Jan. 5: The Punjab p… http://s3nt.com/bm0o

[Blog] Punjab cops may train Israeli-style: The Asian Age

By Asit Jolly

Chandigarh

Jan. 5: The Punjab police is now seeking to better its anti-terrorist skills by … http://s3nt.com/bm0o