Since the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people, private security guards have sprung up everywhere, searching bags and keeping watch at shopping malls, in hotel lobbies, at post offices, even public swimming pools. The profession is so busy that its regulator in France is cautioning that the European Championships host might not have enough guards to fully secure the tournament next June.
Particularly problematic are designated "fan zones" for large outdoor crowds in the host cities, set aside for ticketless fans to gather, watch games for free on jumbo screens, and party. Even before the Nov. 13 attacks plunged France into a state of emergency, the National Council of Private Security Activities was already warning that Euro 2016 "fan zones weren't manageable," the regulator's president, Alain Bauer, said. It has since suggested that zones may need to be scrapped altogether so security can be reinforced at stadiums and resources not spread too thin.
"We can't simply invent people who are neither trained, nor available," Bauer told. "We have left the organisers the time to make a choice."
But other experts say there are practical and philosophical reasons for keeping zones in all 10 host cities next June.
Fan zones have become standard features of sports mega-events. For that reason alone, they must not be scrapped in response to terror. Knee-jerk changes to the way people live and curbing their freedoms would hand a victory to the Islamic State group that claimed the Paris attacks.
"Aren't you then pandering to the terrorists by taking them awayIJ" asks John Beattie, who heads the European Stadium and Safety Management Association. "In some ways that means they are winning. ... Sooner or later the games get played behind closed doors and everyone is watching in their front room."
Explosive vests that suicide bombers detonated in the Paris attacks were packed with steel shrapnel designed to kill and maim. Their cruelty heightened concerns of possible mass casualties if packed fan zones were targeted next June. Ccorralling fans into secured, fenced-in zones, where they could be watched over, may be a safer option than having them dispersed in bars or elsewhere, experts say.
French government officials "prefer to have a crowd gathered in one area rather than having fans spread all over the place, because they are harder to watch and safeguard," Euro 2016 organizer Jacques lambert says.
Helmut Spahn, who oversaw security for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, concurs. "If you have no fan zone and there are 100,000 or millions of people around it is much, much more difficult to secure them," he says.