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Accuracy. The amount of space between attacker and target -- the distance -- profoundly influences attacker accuracy. The Compendium cases show that attackers who fired handguns at targets within 25 feet usually hit their targets. Attackers who fired handguns at targets farther away than 25 feet almost never hit their targets. (We say almost never as a concession to the possibility that there might have been a successful handgun attack on a protected person from greater than 25 feet that did not turn up in our research.) The likelihood of a successful handgun assassination at greater than 25 feet is vanishingly low. It's not that a good shot can't be made at that distance; it's just that no assassin we're aware of has made that shot. Not only handgun attacks are influenced by distance; all types of attack are more difficult from farther away than they are from closer.
Method of Attack. Distance helps to limit the attack methods available. Close in, an attacker might successfully use a knife, handgun, long gun, sword, injection device, hammer, axe, explosive, poison, or fist -- but if he is farther away than 25 feet, the list of attack options narrows profoundly.
Access Control. Strategic use of space allows protectors to compel people to be far from the protectee (e.g., access control backstage at an event, limiting access at the front of the stage, access control at the protectee's work location or home, enforcing manned boundaries around the protectee while moving in public). Strategic use of space allows protectors to allow access only to those who are authorized to be present, and, in the best situations, those who have been screened for weapons. Many of the successful attacks in the Compendium would have failed had access to the attacker's staging point been allowed only to people who were screened and authorized (Oswald #5, RFK #10, Wallace #13, Reagan #25, Sadat #106, Seles #213, Rabin #251, for example).
Vantage. Vantage is the commanding perspective and comprehensive view that can provide advantage. When assessing vantage, ask yourself: Who has the higher elevation? What obstacles are between attacker and target that might benefit one or the other? Who is helped by the relative illumination (for example, is the target illuminated and the attacker in the dark)?
Concealment. Situations and settings that allow an attacker to be hidden or to hide intent afford the opportunity to attack without sending much of a signal. Perhaps the most chilling example is that of the Parliamentary page who leaned in close to South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd as he sat in Parliament. Appearing to deliver a message, this assassin was actually stabbing the Prime Minister to death. Though the protectee knew he was being attacked, the assassination was complete before protectors knew anything was wrong (Compendium #72).
Unlike time, which is an unchangeable constant, each of these factors above can be influenced by protectors. During advance arrangements protectors can select (or at least influence the selection of) holding rooms, foot-routes, temporary accommodations, and, most important of all, vehicle staging and public arrival areas. These critical arrival/departure situations (when the target is in or around the car) carry the greatest likelihood of attack -- and the greatest likelihood of attacker success. Part of mitigating the risk inherent in being in transit is minimizing public exposure along the distances to and from the car and the next relatively safe space (such as a holding room).
Almost every space can be modified or improved in advance of the protectee's arrival, but the most significant influence protectors can have over a space is to change it completely, i.e., choose an entirely different setting. Aside from the outright veto of a setting, you might enter a hotel through the underground garage rather than the lobby; an open-air rally might be staged at the edge of a park rather than the center; a public appearance might occur on a stage that's in front of a level floor (say, a school gymnasium, allowing protectors the advantage of looking downward onto audience members) rather than in an amphitheater, where the stage is lower than the audience, unfavorably requiring protectors to look upward.
Accuracy
Method of Attack
Access Control
Vantage
Concealment
Standing in any environment, ask yourself how you can influence these five factors to your advantage: How can you impede an attacker's accuracy, reduce his options, limit his access, maintain vantage, and make it difficult for him to conceal his actions?
The knife attack on the brilliant young tennis player, Monica Seles (#213), is a telling example of a failure to successfully modify space. Seles' assailant launched his attack from the stands. Though the Women's Tennis Council subsequently publicized that they enhanced security in response to the attack, to date they have not required promoters to take the two most obvious steps: Using metal detectors to screen spectators, and installing clear plastic audience barriers between the spectators and the playing area, as in hockey games.
Even though clear plastic barriers would profoundly enhance player safety and could be made a standard requirement for professional tennis matches, sports promoters defensively claimed that because tournaments occur all over the world, security precautions could not be standardized. Really? Everywhere in the world they require that each tennis ball must bounce 135 to 147 centimeters when dropped from 2.5 meters. Everywhere in the world the courts are required to be exactly 23.8 meters long and exactly 8.2 meters wide, with service courts that extend exactly 6.4 meters from the net to the service line. This sounds like standardization to us, and yet promoters resisted the most meaningful improvements.
While Seles was still recovering from the knife wound, tennis promoters set out to promote the false idea that such attacks cannot be prevented. After the attack, one tennis promoter told CNN that screening for weapons with metal detectors would never work in tennis: "When you are working in an enclosed facility where you've got walls and a ceiling and a roof, yeah, all those things are possible. But a metal detector is not going to deter anyone who is determined to go in that direction."
Aside from the major fact he ignored, namely that metal detectors have frequently deterred would-be attackers, the promoter's statement that weapons screening can't work for tennis because some facilities lack walls and ceilings makes no sense at all. Weapons screening is a component of space management that is good enough for courthouses, airports, TV studios, city halls, concerts, high schools, and even the Superbowl (no ceiling!), but somehow, this businessman claimed, it can't work for tennis. Though he called the thought of screening for weapons "ludicrous," he has throughout his career managed to screen every single spectator for something far smaller than a weapon: a tiny piece of paper, the ticket he sold them.
Sports promoters' response (or non-response) to the Seles attack is another reminder for protectors to improve every space they can; nobody else is going to do it for you.
Protector Positioning
Protectors can't always persuade protectees to take the positions that are safest-but protectors usually do have substantial influence over their own positioning. How they position themselves within a field, and how they reposition when elements change -- these are critical decisions made by each protector, perhaps hundreds of times in a day.
In our favor, we know from TAD and from the Compendium cases that when protectors are positioned close to an attacker (ideally within arm's reach), in effect starting the race at the same place as the attacker, the protector's task is actually easier than the attacker's. The attacker has to perform a precision feat using fine motor skills under the worst possible conditions. The protector, on the other hand, has to perform a fairly imprecise feat (disrupting aim), using gross motor skills.
TAD protectors know in advance that what looks like an attack is an attack, so there's no need to spend time assessing anything. Thus, it comes down to a race, mostly a physical race, between the attacker, who must draw, aim, and fire with some accuracy -- and the protector, who must interfere with the attacker just enough to disrupt aim, which destroys accuracy.
Disrupting Aim Is Easy
When we were designing the TAD exercises, t
here was discussion of how far the protector should carry through when colliding with the attacker. By way of comparison, in our Defense Tactics training, in which students engage people they'll be taking custody of, we require students to complete the process right down to handcuffing, every single time. We want students to develop the muscle memory and habit of carrying through each action toward the goal of gaining safe custody. So in TAD, we wondered if we should do the same thing, and we tried this for a while. What we learned is that taking custody in the traditional sense (handcuffing, etc) is absolutely irrelevant to preventing assassination, irrelevant, in effect, to protecting our clients. There are likely a hundred people present who could be part of holding the assailant after the intervention -- but there might be only one person present who is in position and has the readiness to disrupt aim, and that might be you. So we don't want you thinking about any choreography or next steps. You have just one step: Disrupt aim.
We are not saying here that there is no duty to disarm the attacker, gain control of him, handcuff him, and manage him in a way that's safe for you, him, and others present. Rather, we're saying that all that is secondary -- and we want our protectors focused first on the primary mission: Disrupting aim.
Once you have reached the shooter, and you've connected with his arm, how far do you have to move it such that aim is disrupted? Almost no distance at all. If a capable shooter is aiming accurately at a target 25 feet away, and you change the angle of the gun by just one inch, the bullet will strike more than six feet off target. Even a quarter-inch of movement can make the decisive difference.
People might assume that it's best to charge an attacker with all the momentum possible, with enough force to knock him to the ground or completely disable him. In fact, moving the attacker's arm just slightly will almost always destroy accuracy, and after accuracy is destroyed, then protectors can work on disabling/disarming, controlling, gaining custody. The first and most pressing mission is simply to disrupt aim. Knowing that this is the primary mission makes it easier to attain.
By way of analogy, we put food in our mouths, chew it, swallow it -- and it's then that the real work (digestion) begins. Digestion occurs without conscious effort on our part. One might describe the whole process as eating, however all steps rely upon the first and thus foundational step of putting the food in our mouths. In protection, fully resolving the attack situation has many important steps, but disruption of aim is the foundational step, the fundamental action on which success rests, and thus it's the main thing for protectors to consider as they select their positions.
Broken down into its elements, the mission of the protector who is acting projectively (positioned to interfere with possible attackers) looks like this:
Disrupt aim (thus instantly meeting your primary goal)
Disable/disarm (preventing continued danger)
Control the attacker
Gain custody
Ideally, these steps occur fluidly, one after the next without a clear line between them. But you will have already succeeded if you accomplish the first assignment first: Disrupt aim. So go in knowing it's a goal you can reach.
While the race between attacker and protector might be won by either side, the race between protector and bullet cannot ever be won by the protector. Accordingly, our best opportunity to favorably influence outcome occurs when we are close enough to connect with the arm, hand, gun, or body -- before the bullet exits the barrel.
Once the gun is presented and aimed, the assassin needs to move just one finger whereas a protector who is beyond arm's reach must move all his mass -- and that takes time. In some of the attacks we studied, successful intervention was accomplished by members of the public who were closer to the attacker than protectors were (Compendium cases Delanoe #374, Ford #439, Clinton #450, Chirac #575, Karzai #577, FDR #1396, for example). We point out the fact that some assassinations were made unsuccessful by untrained members of the public in order to stress again how easy it can be to disrupt aim, and how important positioning is.
Right vs. Left
TAD research answered some questions most people had never considered. For example, when you assign a protector to a position, does it make any difference whether the protector is posted on the bystanders' right-hand or left-hand side?
We've learned that it is best to position protectors on the bystanders' left side because attackers consistently perform more poorly when they are engaged by a protector who responds from their nondominant side -- and for most people, that's their left. Protectors who engage attackers on the attacker's nondominant side are more likely to prevail than those who engage on the attacker's dominant side.
All other factors being equal, merely moving the protector to the left side of bystanders significantly reduces the attacker's likelihood of success -- and thus enhances the safety of the protectee.
Since the protector positioned to the left of the attacker sees the gun an instant later (because the shooter's body is blocking his gun hand during the draw), it might seem that positioning on the left would help the shooter be more successful, not less. Also, one might assume that if standing on the left, the protector has to travel farther to reach the attacker's gun arm, thus granting the attacker more time to fire. However reasonable these assumptions, the fact remains that attackers are less likely to prevail when protectors are positioned on the left. Why?
It appears that people are less confident when engaged on their non-dominant side. Attacker nervousness might be enhanced when a protector charges from the left as opposed to the right, as knowing an adversary is on one's weaker side causes more anxiety. And why does the shooter do better when engaged from the right? Again, confidence might be part of the reason. A person engaged on his dominant side is less anxious. Also, since the right is also likely the side of the shooter's dominant eye, a clearer view and better depth perception might serve to discourage flinching when a protector advances from the right. Further, it might be relevant that attackers are more able to maintain footing when assaulted on their dominant side, the dominant side being stronger. Finally, there's the physics of moving the attacker's arm (to destroy accuracy): The right-handed attacker can better resist a push from the right than a push from the left. This is because the attacker has more muscular resistance to force that seeks to move his right arm leftward, than to force that seeks to move his weaker arm rightward.
Studies have shown police officers will resist using their weak hand and attempt to fire handguns with their dominant hand even if their dominant arm or hand has been wounded. All in all, it's clear people feel more confident dealing with challenges that come from their dominant side, and accordingly, we ought not give that advantage to attackers.
Maximize White Space
White Space is the term we use to describe the enforceable open area between protectee and the nearest members of the general public (bystanders, onlookers, audiences, attackers). White Space is ideally maintained as empty of people as possible, so that anyone entering the space (say, climbing over a cordon or barricade) is tipping his intent. The farther away an attacker is when he commits, the better for protectors -- for it means more time to respond. Though cordons and velvet ropes don't physically stop people from entering a space, they do compel anyone who enters the space to send a clear message: "I am violating the rules." Ideally, if there's enough White Space, this message can be received by protectors in plenty of time.
Applying lessons learned from past attacks, we always seek at least 25 feet of White Space. We don't always get it, but when making advance arrangements, we are committed to getting as much as we can. Every foot matters, and every foot is worth negotiating for. When protectees must walk through a gauntlet-type environment (members of the general public or media on both sides, as at a gala event, film premiere, etc.), we try to ensure that the foot-route is as wide as possible. When event coordinators are deciding where the protectee will appear (say, seats or podiums on a stage), we encourage that everything be set up
as far back from the edge of the stage as practical. Similarly, we seek to have the front row of the audience as far back as practical.
If there's a barricade, we seek to get as much distance as practical between barricade and stage. Event coordinators and political advisors have many goals (maximize audience experience, encourage the feeling of proximity to the public figure, make the environment look crowded, encourage excitement, foster the illusion of intimacy, etc.). And we have our single goal: Safety.
Photo from Getty Images
White space need not always be obvious to the general public. Above is an example of a public appearance in which the casual observer doesn't perceive any White Space at all -- but it's there. Event designers had the elevated stage platform (in the foreground) crowded with invited supporters, giving the appearance that the protectee is surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd of general public. In fact, he is also surrounded by protectors.
Photo from Getty Images
Though we couldn't get 25 feet of White Space at this event, we were able to maintain an average distance of 10 feet between the protectee and the nearest members of the public by installing and manning a solid barricade around the stage. Closer examination of the photo reveals the four-foot deep corridor occupied by protectors only. Ten of the detail's twenty-four protectors are visible in this photo. Protectors 4, 6, and 7, and one who is blocked in this photo by protector 2, are down on the public level within the corridor. Protectors 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, and 10 are on the stage level, with protectors 8, 9, and 10 maintaining the integrity of the protectee's exit route from the stage. (Attendees at this event also passed through weapons screening.)