Bouncers and Bodyguards (23 page)

After the initial briefing from the client, we sat down to work out a plan of action to identify whether or not our client was being followed, and if so, by whom. Because of the sensitivity of the operation, we decided not to involve any outside people and just use those who worked within our company, including me! This was my ‘Moment of Truth’, my ‘Ultimate Test’; if I did well, I knew that this would be the first covert James Bond-like spy mission of many – and I just knew I was going to do a great job!

We worked out a route for our client to take the following day. It was going to be a similar route to that which he would normally take, but with a few slight diversions and alterations. My colleagues and I would be strategically placed along the route. Obviously, we knew the model, colour and number plate of our client’s car, so the only thing we needed to do was to take note of the number plates of all the vehicles that followed our client’s within a few minutes of it passing by. Afterwards, using a method of cross reference, we would quickly establish whether or not our client had been followed. If he had been followed, we would use our connections with the police and security services to identify who it was and have him quickly arrested. It was such a simple plan – what could go wrong?

We could not afford to arouse the suspicion of pedestrians, passers-by or, more importantly, the potential kidnappers, so we had to hide ourselves in such a way that we could clearly see the road and all the cars passing by but nobody could see us. In my new role of covert surveillance operative, I found what I thought was the perfect spot – an enclosed patch of bushy greenery.

I got there nice and early, crawled into the bushes and made myself comfortable. I had my sandwich on my knee (after all, a spy can’t go hungry, can she?) and my notebook and pen in hand, and I prepared to wait. Before I got into the bush, I had a good look around to make sure nobody could see me. Apart from ruining the whole operation, it would have been quite embarrassing to hear somebody laugh (or scream) at what they thought was me attempting to have a wee! Muscovites often use these lovely hiding places to do their business, because although there are quite a few public toilets in the city, the state of them is so horrific that going there once is enough to put you off for life. (Public toilets cost five roubles, which you pay to some horrible-looking hag, chain-smoking stale, cheap cigarettes and smelling worse than the loo she supposedly cleans but hasn’t used herself for years.)

Excited about my first big assignment, I made myself snug in the bushes and was all set for the task in hand. If only I had known that in an apartment block not far from my ‘secret’ spot, an elderly woman, whose name I’ll never know, had looked out of her window at precisely the same time as I had slipped between the bushes. From above, she must have seen me crawl into the undergrowth and, as all Russian grandmothers would, thought to herself, ‘What on earth is that pretty young woman wearing a smart office suit doing squatting in the bushes?’ Or something like that, anyway.

I had arrived well in advance of the arranged time to make sure I was not late and that I was well prepared. I had planned to spend about half an hour watching the cars pass by to make sure that I was quick enough to write down the number plates. I started practising, ever so slightly squeezing my head through the thicket at every car that passed, then back in as I frantically scribbled down the number plate, all the while thinking about telling my friends and family about Inna ‘Super-duper Spy’ Bond!

Right in the middle of my daydreaming, I suddenly heard a rustling sound behind me, followed by the angry voice of an elderly woman: ‘Hey you! What are you doing there? Get out immediately. I have been watching you for a while. We have had enough of people pissing in our bushes. You wait. I have called the police already. They are on their way. They will take you to their quarters. You will have to pay a fine for spoiling our park area, and then you’ll have to come back and clean up after yourself!’

I froze with fear and utter embarrassment, and wondered how it was possible to clean up pee from the ground. What could I do? I couldn’t tell her that I was on a covert surveillance operation, but I also couldn’t admit that I was peeing in the bushes! Right at that moment, my eye caught our client’s car passing by. I quickly decided that it was better to lose face than ruin the whole operation and said in a timid voice, ‘Just give me a minute and I’ll be out.’ After that, I started frantically writing down the numbers of the cars that followed the client’s silver Mercedes SLK, as I didn’t really believe that the angry
babushka
had called the police about someone peeing in the bushes.

A few seconds later, I heard a man’s voice shout, ‘Stand up with your hands in the air!’ This, I must admit, I did not see coming. I automatically put the list in my mouth, chewed it and swallowed, as the last thing I needed was to end up in the police department with a list of number plates in my possession. And anyway, that is what I had read in the James Bond books: if spies were caught red-handed, they ate the evidence.

Swallowing the last remains of the paper, I meekly edged my way out of the bushes, my face scratched by sharp thorns, my legs weak from sitting in one position for such a long time and my whole body shaking with fear. Never in my short life had I been in any kind of trouble with the police, and to find myself in this horrible situation was beyond my wildest imagination. As soon as the policeman saw me and my pitiful appearance, he understood that I was no threat. Standing next to him, shaking her wrinkly old fist at me, was the
babushka
.

The policeman asked for my passport and demanded an explanation. I needed to find an excuse for why I had been sitting in the bushes. Saying that I had been having a shit was right out of the question, and the only thing I could immediately think of was that on my way to work I had been followed by a stranger. I had been scared and decided to hide in the bushes. I wasn’t sure whether they believed me or not. Frankly, I didn’t care – I just wanted the whole thing to end. After a stern warning, the policeman finally let me go.

When I got home, I kept wondering how I was going to tell everybody at work what had happened and why I had so miserably failed on my very first security operation. I would have to think of something to tell my boss, so I decided to make up car number plates and hope for the best.

The next day, when we all compared our lists, it turned out that the client’s car had not been followed after all . . . or maybe it had been? Thankfully, he went on to spend many more happy years in Russia.

The moral of the story is never to piss or shit in the bushes, as there will always be a
babushka
on guard! And so much for my covert surveillance skills!

Originally from Moscow, Inna moved to England in 2003. She has worked in the security industry on and off since 1998, first for BLM Security Management Consultants, where she was the personal assistant to the ex-KGB director, and then for a short time as the assistant to the director of the Russian branch of the Olive Group. Inna has spent many years researching and compiling business intelligence reports for foreign clients on the Russian Federation, as well as being involved in a large number of security and investigative operations. However, she has refrained from doing any operation that might include bushes and number plates, and always tries to use public toilets, despite their horrendous state.

Inna currently provides Russian translation services for the security and investigation industry, and runs the membership section of the British Bodyguard Association. She can be contacted at [email protected]

J
ust before I left school in west London in 1980, my contemporaries and I all had to suffer a visit to the careers officer. ‘And what do you plan to do with the rest of your life?’ I was asked. Luckily, I already had a cunning plan: I was going to join the army, get a trade and see the world – hopefully at the same time as drinking lots of beer and meeting pretty girls! Other mates wanted a career in law, banking or industry, while others still hoped to earn their fortunes with a trade such as carpentry or plumbing. Obviously, we all discussed our career plans, but I don’t remember anyone ever saying, ‘I want to be a bouncer when I leave school.’ Not even the ‘big boys’ amongst us ever considered working the doors as a possible career path, and it was certainly never mentioned as a possibility by the careers officer.

It wasn’t until I was well and truly ensconced in basic training up in sunny North Yorkshire and was finally let loose at the weekends on the unsuspecting northern pub and club scene that I first came across a bouncer. Remember, this was in 1980, before we had ever heard of such a thing as a ‘door supervisor’. There was no training, no registration or licensing system, and most doormen in those days were what we would now call old school. They were normally large, strong men, very rarely with a neck or any hair to speak of, and they usually gave off a menacing air of authority that definitely helped ensure that young bucks like me behaved themselves on their premises. The uniform was pretty standard, too: shiny black shoes, black dinner suit, white shirt and black dicky bow. In the winter, this would all be neatly hidden under a long Crombie-style black overcoat and a pair of black leather gloves.

These were not men to mess with. I still remember the distinct feeling of nervous trepidation on a Friday and a Saturday night as I approached the black-and-white guardians of the door, never certain whether I would be able to convince them I was such a nice guy that they simply
had
to let me in. Sometimes I got in; other times I was made to skulk off into the night to try to find somewhere more accommodating to drink.

Twenty-five years ago, bouncers were usually only found outside the larger nightclubs and dance halls. Today, however, they can be found outside most pubs and clubs in our major towns and cities, and are now even used to protect late-night restaurants, takeaways and shops. Some local-council crime-prevention schemes even use bouncers to patrol town centres and taxi ranks, and there are a couple of schemes that use them to travel on late-night buses to prevent disorder and protect clubbers on their way home.

Door supervisors, as bouncers are now called, are usually hired to protect the staff and property of licensed premises and to look after the safety of the customers who use them. They now fulfil many of the general functions that you would expect to be carried out by uniformed security staff in shopping centres. The main difference between these two sectors of the private security industry is the type of people who tend to do the job. Door supervisors, as a rule, have to deal with potentially far more violent confrontations with the public than most uniformed security guards will ever have to in the normal course of their duties, so the physical and mental attributes of bouncers tend to reflect their ability to deal with such situations. Therefore, door supervisors are usually well built and physically fit, attributes not always seen in the uniformed sector.

As the result of the confrontations that inevitably occur at premises that supply alcohol, door supervisors generally have to exercise their statutory and common-law rights to use force more regularly than security workers in other sectors. This is why bouncers have unfortunately acquired a bad reputation in the past, with allegations of unwarranted or excessive force being applied to customers.

An academic study in 1998 explained that the stereotype of a bouncer was perpetuated by the media. In some newspapers, they had been described as ‘gorillas in suits’ and ‘Rottweilers in bow ties’, and various television programmes reinforced the perception of bouncers being men of enormous proportions, low intelligence and a propensity for violence. The author of that work also reported that studies and observations made in 1988 and 1989 described the typical characteristics of a doorman as being ‘masculine, of large stature, aged 26–35 years, has non-verbal control in antagonistic encounters, exerts anger-threat controls against persistent individuals, has fighting ability, a reputation for viciousness, and forms a visible coalition with other doormen when threatened’.

In 1995, a Home Office circular, giving advice to local authorities wishing to set up door supervisor registration schemes in their areas, defined a door supervisor as ‘a person employed on premises which have a music and dancing licence in operation, with authority from the owner or landlord exclusively or mainly to decide upon the suitability of customers to be allowed on those premises; and/or to maintain order on those premises’. This definition was widely used by council- and police-run registration schemes throughout the 1990s until it was superseded by the definition provided by the Private Security Industry Act, 2001.

Thankfully, in most areas, the days when doormen were hired at only the most unruly of pubs and clubs to stop fights, to protect the licensee and to administer their own brand of summary justice to customers who dared to breach the rules of the house are long gone. Professional door supervisors are now considered an essential part of many well-run establishments, ensuring a safer environment in which customers are free to enjoy themselves. Their duties now extend far beyond simply ejecting drunks and preventing disorder, although these elements are still essential to the proper management of any licensed premises. Today’s door supervisors are the eyes and the ears of the licensee, and, as such, are expected to become involved in the many different aspects of running premises designed for entertainment. They are expected to properly welcome customers onto the premises, whilst at the same time enforcing the venue’s entry conditions in a firm but fair manner. Once those customers are inside the premises, door staff are expected to ensure that the evening runs according to everyone’s expectations, at the same time maintaining order and preventing breaches of criminal and licensing laws and house rules. If any of those laws or rules are breached, they need to act within the guidelines of the law and company policy to resolve the situation.