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Keynote Speech BAPCO Conference 2008: Glasgow Terrorist Incident
Glasgow Terrorist Incident - Deputy Chief Constable and Detective Chief Superintendent Campbell Corrigan
The talk can be viewed in PDF format below, or read on the page.
The opening talk of the BAPCO Conference 2008 was a fascinating overview of the Glasgow terrorist incident in June 2007. Richard Gray, a now retired Deputy Chief Constable and Detective Chief Superintendent Campbell Corrigan, spoke about the experiences of that day and how training exercises proved invaluable when faced with a real threat.
After 35 years on the force Richard Gray retired in March 2008, but was a central figure during the incident at Glasgow Airport. Richard explained that large-scale events are not rare for Strathclyde as they have to manage sectarian marches on a regular basis, football matches between Rangers and Celtic and in 2005 the G8 summit was held near Edinburgh. Alongside these examples of live scenarios the force regularly trained for counter-terrorist incidents including the event “Cutty Sark” which provided the emergency services with a series of worst-case scenario situations that pushed their training to the limit.
The incident in Glasgow was preceded by a series of failed bomb attacks in London. As soon as this was known Richard explained that the Strathclyde police force began to increase their searches for known potential suspects in the Loch Lomond area and although they were able to trace phone communications between masts in the area, the geography of the area meant they were unable to accurately pinpoint their locations.
June 30th was one of the busiest days of the year at Glasgow airport as it was the first day of the school holidays so there were thousands of witnesses to the incident. Richard played some telephone calls made to control centres from those at the airport and the information they gave underlined the difficult job those in the call centres must do at disseminating different reports into a coherent understanding of what is happening.
With so many people at the airport, around 4,000, and nine fully loaded planes on the runways, the area needed careful management. By chance a large number of police were a few miles away covering a march so they were re-routed to the airport to help maintain a secure site.
Richard reported that the Airwave network in use during the incident was being used by a large number of officers over a long period of time, but it never went above 50% capacity. Where as in the past this could have been an issue with the new Airwave communication network it worked without fault.
Campbell Corrigan took over the second part of the talk as he was the Senior Investigating Office (SIO) of the incident. Having just returned from a holiday Campbell admitted it was quite a way to return to work but he was able to focus immediately on the situation at hand because of the training undertaken by Strathclyde in the past. The phrase, “training builds muscle memory” was used as a tagline to explain that despite the intensity of the situation and the potential for it to get out of control, training undertaken meant he and other staff on the site where prepared and trained and able to follow procedures correctly.
Then, as Campbell said, when the situation was under control and “couldn’t get any worse” the man from the Jeep who had been admitted to a nearby hospital was designated at CBRN risk and the entire hospital had to be evacuated. This meant resources were stretched further and communication was required between police and ambulance personnel. However, while the incident at the airport required communications between BAA, the police and Fire and Rescue teams Campbell explained they didn’t let the ambulance service “come to the table”, as their priorities were not as important as the other organisations as once it was established there were no casualties and their presence was no longer relevant they left the Crisis Management team.
During the night every available floodlight was brought in to help forensics teams search the site to allow the airport to reopen at 6am. Not only was this an economical reason – each lost flight is around £1 million lost business – but also a sign that terrorism won’t stop every day life and within 24 hours the airport was operational again.
Then with the airport and hospital incidents under control, the police searched the “bomb house” as the media dubbed it, and found huge amounts of potential evidence. As Campbell explained, at such a delicate stage, officers had been working long shifts in an intense situation but because ‘training builds muscle memory’ officers were able to carry out their jobs correctly and efficiently.
Richard Gray concluded the talk saying, “the incident at Glasgow airport highlighted several key factors that police forces must remember. Experience, from training and real-life incidents is vital, and will serve you well during an actual incident. Not only that but communication is vital, although as Campbell outlined, you must be strict in who is given a voice, as some organisations do not need to be represented. You must be resilient to deal with the unexpected, such as the hospital suddenly having to evacuate their patients and you must be practical.”
As an opening talk to one of the major conferences of the year it was a fascinating and pertinent insight into an incident that had the potential to become a disaster area. But with suitable training, incident preparedness, and resilient policing it was something of a triumph for Strathclyde police and something they are obviously proud to be able to point to as an example of their policing history.
