Friday, November 28, 2008

tactical nightmare

much more learned men and women will disect the events that shook Mumbai recently.

Looking at television pictures / reading TimesOfIndia to get updates from 15000 miles
away my thoughts at a 4 day weekend melted away rapidly.
This was too unreal to comprehend.

What I was seeing on TV (thanks to live feed on ndtv.com) was shocking me to no extent.
Not just because of the audacity of the attack but because of the sorry state
of crisis management and the worse state of irresponsible TV journalism.
One of the images I will remember for a long time to come is a policeman
pleading with a TV journalist who had a mike in his face to step back.
"Please Please" he yelled with folded hands -- while all he had in return is
"please sir how many are there" ... frustrated, the cop replied back 10.
An arbitrary number -- which was probably reported as exclusive information.

Which brings me to the sorry state of crisis management.
1. Where was the perimeter / exclusion zone
Usually when there is a political rally / ganapati visarjan, bandobast arrangements are top notch. Here cameramen and TV journalists were walking about the lobby of Taj showing heritage horses which were damaged !
2. Thanks to the total lack of initial bandobast, all evidence compiled from the Taj has been effectively compromized. Later things did get locked down and TV crews calmed down a bit ... I guess after the police took news channels off air for some time.
3. Where was a government / police / army spokesman who could have taken a lot of the edge off over eager junta for information
4. Why were television crews allowed to talk to individual security personnel.
There should have been standing orders passed down the line that standard answer line as "No Comments"

The media needs to grow up and quickly. The administration needs to put a Standard Operating Procedure in place to handle various situations. Standing instructions need to be in place for the following:
1. Serial Blasts.
2. Communal Riots.
3. Hostage situations
4. Gun battles (usually gang wars).
5. Natural Disasters
6. Chemical / Biological attacks

Besides this, a clear escalation path needs to be defined.
If you cant get a handle on the situation in 1 hour, escalate it.
First resoponders will usually be local police, then special task forces from
state governments. If they cant handle it, you call in the army - which has
standard operating procedures in place.

The lives of the ATS men were probably lost due to gross underestimation of the opposition. Risk assessment should be made a part of the training of local police.

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