The police response to Sunday’s embarrassing fake bomb scare at Old Trafford shows contingency plans for terror attacks are effective, according to a former head of the Flying Squad.
Manchester United’s Barclays Premier League game against Bournemouth was called off after a security scare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxEmeFgrXys
After the stadium was evacuated, a bomb disposal unit carried out a controlled explosion on an “incredibly lifelike explosive device” which was later revealed to have been accidentally left behind by a private company after a training exercise.
That fact may have caused red faces but the police and stadium security were praised by fans for the way the incident was handled.
And John O’Connor, a former detective with the Metropolitan Police who headed up the Flying Squad at New Scotland Yard, believes the final outcome shows the system of extensive security checks and intelligence operations does work.
“The police are likely to err the side of caution and I don’t blame them, because if something had happened and the police had said ‘we did get a warning, but we didn’t do anything about it’, they are going to be in big trouble,” O’Connor told BBC Radio Five Live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbF2j-5aZrw
“I can understand why the tensions are so high because they are going to be vulnerable for this every time there is a football match on.
“It is brilliant really because it shows they are contingency plans that the police have been training for for a long, long time. We saw the one last week (at the Trafford Centre in Manchester) which was for a terrorist attack.
“It shows that it does work and it might be a pointless exercise for potential hoaxers, or even potential terrorists, to make a target of a football stadium.”
