Chapter 354

The next big thing that JBG Security faced was the independent political debate. I had extended the RRT time off to a full week. When they came back, we had two weeks to get everything in place.

Cindy and Mark began the task of notifying the college security employees who were going to work the debate. I made a command decision that while they were this close, they were going to be recertified.

With three firearms trainers, Jamie’s team could do 30 in a day. With the college group the retraining would not be as intensive. They just needed to show proficiency with the pistol, shotgun and rifle.

There were people who objected to our college security people being armed on campus, but the Warrington incident as well as other incidents at other colleges proved it was necessary. The rifles and shotguns were kept in a gun safe in the director’s office along with a better set of body armor.

On the mats the basics were all that were needed along with take-down skills. All of it should go quickly.

One of the side hangars was being used to store the many pieces arriving, based on our preliminary planning for the debate. All of it would have to be trucked to Montgomery County. We still had one of the box trucks from the NASCAR vehicle updated with a rear lift gate. Marcy had leased the other two to the county school board.

On Thursday, Vicky, Ching Lee and I went to Montgomery County to look at the convention center, site of the debate.

“Wow,” this place was huge. I was not getting enough information from Mark and Cindy but they both had been very busy with Middle East issues.

Two hundred security guards would not be enough. It would take a hundred just to cover the parking lot, plus parking lot attendants to park cars. The plan needed to be changed already and we had not even put a firm one together yet.

Back at the office I went to see the EIT for an update on the BAM, BRMM and the Mad Matters groups. I was glad I did.

Robert was putting the last five days of surveillance into a folder for me. They were going to bus protesters in from three states. They also planned to have the buses come early and to use the buses to block off all the accesses to the parking lot and streets of the convention center complex.

I had a camera full of pictures and several Google map pictures. I printed off color pictures of all those I had taken. I put them out on the table to get a full site view. I should have taken one of the camera drones; I would the next time I went.

My clerks - with Jenny’s assistance - had mailed out 5000 RSVP tickets. The return portion had a line to write a question for the candidate.

4500 replies had been returned to date; 3500 of them had questions that were being entered into one of our computers; they would be printed out on 3 x 5 cards. They would be whittled down to a couple hundred to use for the debate.

The remaining 500 were going to be sent another invitation. At a week before the debate, we were going to send reminders to all of them as a reminder of the event.

The convention center was an old one and had a seating capacity of 5000. We needed to use a portion at the rear where the entrance doors were to set up the security area for the body and bag scanners.

I kept adding to the list of things that possibly needed to be done. I had a legal pad that I was keeping notes on.

1. Jersey barriers

2. Heavy lift forklift; 100,000 pound with long forks.

3. Heavy-duty wrecker. “Highway Thru Hell, rotator version.”

4. A big tent to handle the crowd waiting to go through security in case weather turned crappy.

5. Projectors and screens in case there were still people in the tent after debate started. The tent could also be used for people without tickets to the convention hall.

6. Come up with a solution to get 100 parking lot attendants.

7. Find an agency that would search the convention center with bomb sniffing dogs before the debate.

8. Have 24 hour guards at center at least a week before, to prevent tampering, sabotage and other activity.

9. Verify that all sound systems were operating.

10. Verify that the convention center was insured for all possibilities.

11. Verify that the convention center had enough electric power to run the scanners at the entrance of the building. Get a generator for backup.