EP 017 Andy Neal, Uncovering Intentions: Behavioural Analysis in Threat Detection and Prevention

Andy is the Associate Director of Global Security Solutions at Cardinus Risk Management where he provides a range of clients with training in corporate travel safety, lone working, hostile environments, conflict management and behaviour profiling.

Throughout a career spanning 24 years, Andy has a proven track record in delivering outcomes across regional, national, and international projects in partnership with Government, Military, and non-Government agencies. Highly regarded in his field, Andy has extensive experience, specialist training and a unique style of delivery that gets results.

He has designed and delivered strategies on counterterrorism, lone working, global travel safety, personal security operations training and procedures. 

Andy is the tactical security advisor to the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM), and delivers masterclass talks on safety and security around the globe. 

He has a master’s degree in Terrorism Studies, where his dissertation reads, can security personnel detect hostile reconnaissance without the use of technology.

Here is the link to Andy Neals book
Walking Tall: Personal Safety Guide | Cardinus

Security Circle ⭕️  is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

Yoyo 0:15

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. If PO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers and we're dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members' mental health and wellbeing with me. As a very special person, Andy Neil. Andy is the Associate Director of Global Security Solutions at Cardinals Risk Management, where he specializes in training, corporate travel security loan, working hostile environments, conflict management. And behavior profiling throughout the career, spanning 24 years, he's got a proven track record in delivering outcomes across regional, national, and international projects in partnership with government, military, and non-government agencies. Highly regarded his field, and he has extensive experience, specialist training and a unique style of delivery that gets results. He's also the tactical advisor to the International Institute of Risk and Safety Manage. And he delivers masterclass talks on safety and security around the globe. He's got a master's degree in terrorism studies where his dissertation reads, can security personnel detect hostile reconnaissance without the use of technology? And we're gonna be talking about that today. Welcome to the Security Circle Podcast. Andy, how you doing? Yeah, thank you, Yolanda. Thank you for the, introductions. Really good. Thank you. Appreciate that. Well, it's, it's all you Andy, let's start off. It was a pretty bleak outcome, wasn't it? When you found yourself in hospital, facing a very different future to the one you expected. Take us back to that moment and what was going through your mind. Yeah, I was. Serving in the military, and as some of the listeners will know that if you're severely injured, you go to called Headley Court, which is, was no longer there. It was down in Leatherhead. Uh, and I actually spent two years in hospital on a recovery from a severe head injury, which I was discharged from the military and medically with allegedly 40% disabled. And so I had to make a decision on, on where I go, what I do, and how I kind of function if you like. Cause it's quite easy to sit on your laurels which is what I did. So, and I started to go into the security field from there. Look, two years, that's quite a rehabilitation period. Do you remember how you felt back then? And did you have any idea what journey was ahead? You know, with a, with with a head injury, you landed, you don't, you don't, you haven't got any memory of, uh, of the actual injuries. So I didn't really have any reflection. It's just living day by day, you know? So, give you an example. Some of my, my rehabilitation was doing OnePlus Lego because my short-term memory was totally depleted, so I couldn't, I couldn't remember anything, even what you're speaking to me about. So, uh, the challenge certainly was, was to be able to function normally without being a danger to myself. You know, we, we've all left bathtubs. And cookers, you know, cooking away and forgetting about them. But literally on my case, it was a really dangerous situation because of the, cuz of the type of injuries I had. And what was the first moment that you thought, okay, I've got this, I, I can get better and I can get back to where I was again and I know this is gonna be okay. I don't think there was a, a time on that. I think it's like everybody, you know, any of our military listeners to your your podcast in the Circle will recognize is the military give you a, a, a certain set of skills and it's not. The cliche from a film or anything, Liam skills that you, you know, if you've got a hurdle in front of you, you never give up. And, and, you know, it's very easy to accept all of the government handouts different things. But I, I, I certainly wanted to challenge and, and actually move forward and I wasn't prepared to accept what I've been labeled with. So I, I started to, to just work out and, and, and get back into the mainstream of work. I wouldn't, I didn't want to take disability benefits. I didn't wanna take. You know, disability handouts. I just wanted to, to leave the military behind me and move forward, which is what I did. Have you always been a person that pushes himself really hard? Andy? Well, yeah, some, I always want to be the best at what I wanna be. I wanna be ahead of the curve. That's my sort of attitude. I want, I want people to, to listen to what I have to say and actually just take on challenges in life and in business, which is what I do. I mean, look, you're being very modest, really. You've come through a bit of, a bit of a crossroads in life, but you went into the security industry. Now a lot of people I speak to, you know, they just fall into it, and especially through police or military channels as well. It's an awful lot easier. Why did you choose the security industry? I think it's, uh, it's a natural progression from, from the military. You know, you, you're working with like-minded people, men and women. It's certainly an industry that you can, apply yourself to. And my first actual assignment was in Park Lane working in the Hilton Hotel Park Lane and in the five star hotels in Park Lane. So it was quite a, a more prestigious security appointment, if you like. So that was, that was my first assignment down there. So that was, yeah. for those of us that have seen you where you've held keynote speeches, for example, and we had one recently from you, uh, with, as i s uh, you talk about your master's. I know you are not a young man. I am not a young woman. But it is, it's, it is. Although sometimes I try and convince myself it's not easy is it to, to contemplate such a big undertaking at this stage in your life. Tell me how. You found the impetus or the willingness even to do that? Where did that come from? Yeah, sure. That's a great question, Yolanda. I go back to that drive to better myself and I found that I couldn't, uh, I couldn't do things physically because of certain disabilities and I. I'd been training around the world there, there were a, a couple of us got together and we, we decided to look at what psychologists were saying about behaviors, and we thought in a security setting there needs, there needs to be a little bit more clarification. So I started to deliver training programs around the world. On behavioral detection and on two occasions I was referred to the Department of Transport. One, one occasion was from the British Embassy in Doha, and on another occasion was from, uh, the international overseas development of the government. When I went in front of the, the powers that be at the Department of T. In the UK and that's working. Things like border force, the police forces, et cetera. I didn't have any empirical evidence to back up what we were training. We had fantastic results from the training that we were delivering on behavioral detection, but I didn't have no empirical evidence. Now at that stage, I didn't realize what empirical evidence was. So during lockdown, I actually thought to myself, do you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna I wanted to put the cement between the bricks. You know, I knew my job and I knew exactly what we were doing, what we were training. But put the cement between the bricks is what I refer to is, is, is doing the academic background So I decided to. Go and study, uh, a Master's in terrorism studies. And thankfully, well, that was an easy decision for me because my actual dissertation I'D already had in my head, which was how to train security personnel to detect behaviors. one of the hardest things any, any listeners will hopefully agree with is actually getting your actual question set or your research questions. My research questions were already in place, so that's why I went into it. smashing. I mean, you the put the cement. Between the bricks. I think a lot of people can resonate with that because you certainly have a lot of bricks of knowledge, don't you, in this industry and, and they come from different sources. putting the cement in is almost kind of solidifying your knowledge and, and academically, I get that. But terrorism studies. What did you learn other than your dissertation, which we'll talk about in a minute, what did you learn about doing a master's theory in terrorism studies? I think the whole the whole thing on the terrorism studies was the modules involved ranged on terrorism financing to targeting terrorism, to radicalization, and obviously in, in the newspapers and, and in the terrorist attacks we've had in the uk. That was quite prevalent. But I, I'll give you an example of one of the modules in there, and that was, How can a, emerging country design and develop an effective counter-terrorism strategy, uh, which remains both ethical and complies to national, international legislation. So it was almost like, it almost, there was a big eureka moment there that you're being set up to install counter-terrorism measures in emerging countries. For example, you know, you would imagine United Kingdom's got a very strong, uh, counter terrorism measure, you know, prevent, et cetera. Europe, you know, the Dutch, Norwegians, et cetera. So it was a, it was almost like becoming a subject matter expert on that. So that was one of the biggest sort of eureka moments, if you like, of the breadth and depth of knowledge you have to have to research within terrorism. So yeah, absolutely. So take us through then. You said you already had an idea, you know, before doing this, what your dissertation could be about. Which, Andy, it comes across really smart. Really, there's no point in starting this and then spending the first year going, oh, Craigie, what am I gonna do? So you had an idea, didn't you, from the outset? Your dissertation. Yeah, I, I, as a security personnel and, and again, coming from the military, we, we, Looked at all incidents that you can look at and, and nobody was really grabbing the horns of, of reading, people reading situations. You can read many, many books on, Psychological reading of people, you know, and psychologically reading people is, is very different than in a security setting. You know, people say, oh, you can read body language and read, but reading social body language, how people have been brought up, their attitudes and their beliefs is, is impossible cause everybody's different. But in a security setting, when you are doing something very. You shouldn't be doing. I believe that the body actually starts to, uh, to show out pressures and stresses, and that's what the, the master's degree was about, particularly the dissertation. So we started to, to look at that and everything we looked at, we, we picked up points, which could have been recognized by, by security personnel, for example. And that's what you call leakage, isn't it? In respective behavior leakage. Take us. Absolutely. What, what I've been doing recently is we've been studying, uh, you know, security personnel. If you think security personnel, in my opinion, has, has been, it's been a very static role, but it's security guarding, which I hate. You know, uh, the police have limited resource. And I, and I've been studying the, uh, American Institute of Violence and particularly the active shooter attacks in America. And interestingly, what's coming out of that is the psychologists are saying to look for leakage in the workplace. You know, it's a psychological term. Leakage. Leakage is look for behaviors in the workplace. So from that, uh, point of view, I looked at security offices and I think, you know, it's not just a physical deterrent to stop people coming in and out, egress, it's actually being able to. Or a referral process for people within an office block to refer to the security teams about somebody's behavior. Because if you, if you've studied the American, uh, violence projects, and this is just off the top of my head, and 60% of, personnel in active shooting situations of are disgruntled employees. Who come back to harm the workforce. So Steve, I see, yeah. I see a big change in workplace roles for security offices, not just on the theft and crime, but also on, somebody. Our listeners, you've been in the office and you'll see somebody and you say, are you okay? They'll, they'll see a behavioral change in somebody, and if that behavioral change is enough to refer to a security team or were trained on behavioral detection, then may be, that may be the averting message because the, the overwhelming message that comes out of the Americans violent project from the perpetrators of active shooting was if only somebody had listen. Every single one of them said, only somebody had listened, it would've averted them carrying those atrocities. So the conversation then afterwards is, oh, that explains why he was acting like that and why he was saying that. And yeah. Okay. And so everyone's kind of acting, reacting rather than considering preventative options. Okay, so, so give us an idea about, Some of those, you know, leakages that we could see and potentially harmless environments, but why they stand out so much and something we should be paying attention to. Sure. Okay. So if you look at what the first, the easiest thing to look at is what we call natural body language. First thing to look at natural behaviors. Natural behaviors is, is when people are relaxed. So their brain chemicals, what we call parasynthetic synthetic responses. Are naturally placed. So say for example, you'll see all the hands open. Loose joints as you are now, your head's tilted over to the side. So that is, uh, yeah, that's anthropological, a calming effect in humans. If you, if you speak to a dog, it will tilt his head. Humans, when they're calm, tilt their head, it actually goes back to the head breast, head against the mother's breast. It's a calming effect in humans. So it's easier to look for a natural behavior than a negative behavior. When you start to look for negative behaviors, you see things like the blink rate slows. Yeah, a normal blink rate and normal conditions is around 15 to 18 times a minute. You've got a, a wave for lighting and wind, et cetera, but 15 to 18 times a minute, people naturally blink. So you can look at them for 10 seconds and you'll see two or three blinks. Naturally, when people are, are more, uh, defensive, more on the pressure, those blink rates don't go down to three to four blinks a minute, so there's a lot less restricted. You also start to identify that what we call pilay activation. So if, if you ever approach a dog, what does a dog do? When you approach a dog? if you watch very carefully, the fur on the back of its neck will rise. It's called the pilay activation. Yeah. As humans, we don't have fur on the back of our necks anymore, but we have an ancient nerve called PTI at the back of our neck. So when we're under pressure and our, our listeners would've, would've seen this when you're under pressure, What happens is the hand goes to the back of the neck January three or four times. It's not an itch, it's just a definite movement to the back of the neck, uh, when somebody's feeling uncomfortable and, and we can go down through the whole body. And that's just a few examples. We look at licking of the lips, how the hands work. How the blink rates how the joints lock in. This systems that I believe is, is easily trained to security personnel to be able to actually identify somebody who is under pressure, who is not acting naturally in a natural environment. Does that make sense? In a hotel lobby or, you know, Yeah, I mean it's funny that you said that I tilted my head like, you know, dogs do. Cuz I also do need to go for a walk at some point. And I like treats too. You did, but I wanted, I know I'm being dark. I wanted to draw the sort connection between animal behaviors and human behaviors. Cuz even my cat, you know, when it's, it's on alert, it's whole body changes. You know, the fur floss out the back arches, you know, there's a whole, whole load of things. And animals do have their towels don't they, when, uh, under threat potentially. So what are the links between animal and human behavior? Absolutely. One of the one of the things that the study we looked at in particular is animals is, is more from the ape. From the, the chimpanzees, for example, uh, which is a closest known thing to hum Homo Sapien. And, and a lot of that is to eye movements. If, if you listen to one of my, my talks in my masterclass and some of the publications we have, eye movements are a huge thing. So one of the things I would say to you is, what's the difference between your eyes and a chimpanzees? Well, I think I'm better looking for a start. I, I, we have a very different diet, Andy, you know, I don't have so many bananas these days. Okay. Do you know, I don't, I don't know how to answer that, I'll be honest. But are you as strong as a chimpanzee? Chimpanzees about 18 times as strong as the average human male. Wow. You first as a chimpanzee. It's probably about three times, and that you, you saying bolt, it's probably about three times faster than the human being. Wow. Are you as agile as an ape? Nope. Okay. So an ape has three defense systems, strength, speed, and agility. Humans, because we stood up, we've lost strength, we've lost speed, and we've lost agility. So we needed to have a different early warning mechanism of defense. So I will say, the next question I'll ask you is, can you tell me when somebody's staring at you? Well, yes and no because even in the police, for example, when we were training as detectives in, in interviewing people, especially perhaps potentially suspects that were quite intimidating, we'd look at their eyebrow, you know, so that we could maintain a positive. Eye contact without feeling too intimidated. Mm-hmm. But I think it is difficult to know when someone is looking directly at you, if they are trained to, to do things like that. I'm going beyond the eyebrow. I'm actually going into the eyes because my, my question earlier was the difference between apes and human eyes. Humans, because we've lost three defense systems. Humans are one of the only animals in the animal kingdom whose majority of our eyes are white. Apes eyes. Our black and brown has no whites to the eyes. You look into an apes eyes, you dunno. It's passive, defensive or aggressive cuz has no facial features that give you the mood. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. The whites of their eyes, you ask, most of our listeners or your listeners will, will, will say they can feel when somebody's staring at and you get that, that feeling. Does that make sense? And. One of our key areas within my field of studies is to actually watch the eyes and see what the eyes do when, uh, you are looking for risk. Because that's the human's first. That's the first onslaught of risk, is via the eyes. There's that really cool line from Clint Eastwood Wasn't there in, in the line of fire when you played an F B I agent protecting the president. And he was asked why he never wore shades like the others. And he said, he said, cuz I like them to see the whites of my eyes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and you've heard of that saying, you know, the eyes of the root to the soul. You know, there, there is something, when you're trained to look at that you can actually start to see people's behaviors. A a good example for your listeners is to, is to look up the planet of the ape. Faces from the, the movie Planet of the Apes. And what they've given them is human eyes. And that is where you get the, the moods from. When you look at somebody who'll say, what do you think their mood is? And when they look at a Planet of the APE television, you know, the, the film version. You can say, oh, he's moody, he's aggressive, and it's not because anything of the, their skin color, their lines, their hair. It's because what the eyes are saying, because the, the actual directors of the film have given those apes human eyes, which is, gives them the moods. Interesting. Mm-hmm. What else do the eyes tell us then, when it comes down to looking at, say, natural and agitated states? What do people need to look out for? Okay. So for, for example, one of the things I'll ask your listeners to, to think about is what do they do when somebody stares at you? What do you do when somebody stares at you? Yeah, and and quite often a majority of people, quite a lot of people, so somebody stares at them, they look down. And that implies they've become victim. So the first line, particularly for security officers, if they're confronting somebody, the person will, will, will stare at them. The security officer will look down, which means he's weaker than the person that is, or she's weaker than the person that is staring at them. So they've already. Got a, an angle into you if you like. So one of the things to do with the eyes is, is to never, ever look down when somebody's staring at you. You always go above the eye line like a triangle above the head, which basically says to the person staring at you that you are not open for an approach. So there's ways of using the eyes to actually diffuse risk and actually take control of situations. Now, if we could encourage that in environments, so for example, I attended recently the Tiny G Violence Against Women Seminar and the British Transport Police are doing lots, for example, to promote a, a healthier traveling environment, uh, where women should hopefully be able to travel free from intimidation and harassment and. Staring was one of the things that came up. And you're right, it is used as an. Tactic. It's one of the first layers, isn't it? And if we could encourage women perhaps, to use that triangle above the eyes, like you say, that would be a re I mean, look on in the moment, I should imagine the instinct is to look down, look away. We trained a nurse and she found us train her on a Friday and Monday she phoned us up and she said she was on a, on a tube train in London and it was, she's going quite a distance on the tube. It, uh, wasn't that busy, but opposite her was a, was a, was a male who was drunk, drinking heavily. And he said as they went through the stops, the, the bus or the train became less and less commuters on there and just became him and her. And there was another commuter in, in the, uh, a little bit further down in the carriage. And he said, Andy, he stared at. Yeah, across the seat from me says, what I did is exactly what you said as I looked above his head and above the triangle, above his eye line, and that made him look away and it stopped his engagement. She said, I, I knew before you trained me to do that. I would've looked down into my lap hoping he would've gone away, should I have no doubt. He would've then started talking to me, offering me a drink, and then the situation would be in a different setting. Does that make sense? You said it worked perfectly. You know, and, and again, it goes back to the eyes why humans have whites. The eyes were just trying to divert people. Cuz in my opinion, people are selected to be victims, uh, on a Are you approachable? Are. And that that's the situation. Are you approaching why you're not? And there's certain tactics we can use, like what the Bridge transport police are looking for, that you can tell somebody who is, who is trying to dominate you with vision, that you are not approachable, you're not open for a conversation or anything to take it to the next level. I know that I'm not alone when I say that. I've been in that situation and the part of the brain is even thinking, do you know I could get off at this next stop, hedge my bets that I'm not gonna meet another asshole at the next station and wait for another train rather than continue on the course with this individual who's becoming persistently a pain in the neck. This is just a, a normal way that we think, you know, when we're traveling alone on public transport, the fact that we're thinking, do I hedge my bets and, and get another bus and go, and. Maybe at a bus stop on the street in an area, I don't really know, rather than continuing the carriage with this individual. Great advice. So other than eye contact, what other victim behavior do people look to exploit then, and we can relate this also to, you know, even corporate security environment as well. Sure. I think, uh, one, one of the key things that, I find quite fascinating is how people, what people do with their hands. So if, if you imagine walking down the street, and I always get asked a lot, particularly by our female listeners about what to do with handbags, et cetera. You know, Andy, what do we do with our handbags? And clearly, you know, security measure is turn a handbag over so the flap is against your leg and not on the outside. One of the things is what people do with their arms. If what we could talk about now is what we call the core of the body, which is from the neck down to waistline. So if you're just walking down with your arms down by your side, going back to that, I'm open for an approach. It would be assailant is looking for somebody who is open and vulnerable. If you're walking down the road with your arms to the side, it basically dictates that you're approach. You are unguarded if you like. So actually one of the best piece of advice I can give you listeners is to actually, if they're walking into a location, say for example, you get off that train, which is always good advice if you feel unsafe and wait in the location you're not aware of. Just put your arms in front of you, into your core, cross your arms across your core Now. Now statistics have shown that just by doing that when you put your arms across your core reduces the risk of you being approached by 40. Wow. And yet that's the very body language we try to discourage ourselves from doing in the work environment, so that we don't look hostile and Absolutely. But what, what you're, what you're saying, you know, for, for, for your female colleagues, I always just say, put your arm across your torso and grab your strap of your handbag. And you're doing two methods there, aren't you? You're saying to them, I'm not ready for this to be snatched off me, and Absolutely. I'm, I'm protecting myself. 40% risk reduction and, and all these things. You, Lando, you know, I, I travel around the world, been in some difficult situations, and I just use these little tactics, particularly with the eyes, with the arms, and you're fine. People just melt away from you. You just, you're not telling people you're open for an. Is, that because deep down when you look at opportunist criminals, for example, they're looking for an easy and in an easy out. Absolutely. They don't, it doesn't, they don't want it to be hard work. Mm-hmm. So it's the same with a predatory behavior. They just want an easy and in an easy out. so the more layers of challenge you can present. The least likely you are gonna be that type of target. there, there was a book I, I studied before I did a master's or just read the book and it was, it was about street gangs in London and one of the overwhelming, and they interviewed street gangs in South London. One of the overwhelming, uh, messages that the street gangs gave up is that they know they're victims as soon as they look at them. That's down to that eye contact we're talking about and down to how their, their body, their persona is. Does that make sense? There's certain little tactics that you can use that actually says to somebody, go elsewhere. I'm not open for an approach, and that includes people. Begging and it includes people asking for directions, you know? And so it's all about conducting yourself in different environments and using simple little tactics to be able to, to avert attention. You know, I saw something recently demonstrated, and albeit it was in a movie, it was in the Equalizer two with Gensel Washington when he was trying to bring a. Uh, boy into his fold for the, for the better, right? Rather than getting absorbed into the street gang. And he took them on, he took them all on, all five of them because his, his skillset was such that he was never gonna be a victim to them. So what you said, I know it's only a movie, but really resonates. What was the name of the book for those people that might want to, uh, read that? I've just written a, a, a new book. It's called Walking Talk, uh, and Walking Tall, and you'll laugh about this. Yolanda, have you seen seen the uh, the program dealer No deal on television? Do you know of? Of course. Well, I hired film. I hired the film crew. So what, what I want you to make this book is, is, is an interactive book. So it's, it's, it gives you the dos and don'ts, but actually it's got queue readers in. And the dealer, no deal team filmed us. You put your phone over it and it talks about what to do if you're being followed, what to do in hotels, what to do in the back of the taxi, what to do if you're approached by somebody, host hostile or drunk, or somebody with a knife and, and all these tactics. And it's all in this. This book was just written called Walking Torn, and I actually wrote it. When I, when I, you know, if you ask me why I got into security and why some of these things we've been talking about to me that you, you don't need to spend years and years doing martial arts or years and years of, of training. Just little tactics that you can use that actually give you a lot of confidence, and, and that's what I put into the book Walking Talk. So what we'll do is we'll put a link to that book, certainly on your bio so those people can, uh, find out more and click on and read all about it. It's not the first time, I mean, I've got this passport to protection that I, I convinced you to give me when I last saw you. Yeah, it was like, you are not getting out live unless I have a copy of this. It is brilliant. It's called Passport to Protection and it's a guide to personal safety when traveling. And there's loads of little, uh, smart codes in here as well. I mean, everybody should have one of these. What made you do this? It was designed for, for the traveler, and, and, and it's a generic, it's, it, it was designed for people traveling overseas and my thought process on that was you get a lot of students traveling overseas and having a, having a gap year. Actually their, their street knowledge, their knowledge of, of operating in the street is quite poor. So that book was designed what you've got in front of you now. Passport to Protection, which is the sister book to walking tour, was designed for people traveling overseas. Walking tour focuses. It's a generic, but it's mainly focused on women's safety. So there's elements in there about what to do with stalking, harassment, what to do if you're being stopped by police at nighttime, for example. You know, the, I think, I think our, our listeners, your listeners need, need a little bit of confidence on how to operate in different locations, and that book was how to Operate Overseas. I can see that university students over here for their first year, for example, uh, this is, there's a huge market for something like this, you know, even down to what to do if an incident occurs. And, and we've had several of those, haven't we in London, let's face it over the last few years. But I like the tips and tricks as well. You know, there's, it's really, really well thought of, what do you plan to do with this going forward? Because there's a huge market out there. I actually, I actually wrote that book and interestingly, I went to, to train in China and I went to Beijing and I looked at all of the Chinese students coming overseas to study in Western Europe. And a lot of them, you know, they, they turn up, they don't have bank accounts, they have expensive cameras around their necks. So it was designed really to offer Chinese students a way of assessing Western. Security, but I didn't, I didn't get it translated into Mandarin cause I didn't know anybody could, could translate it into Mandarin. So the idea of that for me is, you know, LAN, this may be, uh, business suicide, but. When, when you read some of the horrific things that happened to Sarah Everard and I've listened to some of our colleagues, you know, in, in, in some of the a as SSIS s meetings, some of our female colleagues, I, I would give that book away. It's not, it's not anything for me financially, it is just something for somebody to, to disseminate around the family. Yeah. Just use as a as as a guide, because in my opinion, security and safety shouldn't have a value with it. It should be just a, something that we're trained to do. Well, listen those, for those that are interested, they can reach out to you directly and then it's up to you whether you wanna give some out for free, maybe. So walking tool, what inspired you? Because you becoming an author isn't an easy thing to do, surely, you know, you, you're a bit of a glu for punishment really, with all the things that you put yourself through. I just think I just think, you know, for example if, if talking about being stopped by the police at nighttime, you know, and, and it's just things that I find, you know, quite normal. When you're talking to people that they, they turn around and say, do you know what? I never even thought of that. You know, I've never even thought, so I I was, you're an ex-police officer landers. So if, if you, if you get police officers for example, pulling up, you're in an isolated location, they want you to stop. If you say to people that are untrained, just put your hazard lights on and then drive to a place. That is populated like a garage. Yeah. First thing, police, DCTV police. Yeah. First thing police officers would say to you is they congratulate you for doing that. There's no police force in the world which would criticize you for not stopping in a place where you feel safe, especially now. Yeah. And I think that's, that's the message that is missing. Does that make sense? And, and also, there's nothing wrong with actually saying to a police officer that you feel nervous and you don't want to do something. Yeah. You know, there's a huge difference. Isn't, isn't there between. Putting your foot down and showing the police dust to slowing down, putting your houses on, and just because they'll work out, they'll work out that you are wanting to go to it. You're not saying I'm refusing to stop. You're saying I wanna stop in a place that I feel safer. Absolutely. Great. Great advice. I'll be stopped a couple of times and I haven't, or I have to say I am. I think, I think my advantage to knowing the law in relation to being stopped with it by a police officer who isn't in uniform is, is, is beneficial because not everybody knows. Absolutely, you know, you know, and police, police officers stopping you with you know, they, they will be wearing a, a gel text jacket, a a luminous jacket. They will have certain features about them, which you can visually check, and if you're still unhappy, keep your engine running. Don't open your doors and phone the police. You can stop. You're a bit concerned and there's nothing wrong with that. 100%. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, look, you've brought up Sarah Everard. Uh, Sarah Everard has actually, you know, prompted a lot of, uh, psychological calls to action, certainly within our security community, Andy, and there's no doubt about it, there's probably gonna be more that comes out of that in relation to, you know, the recent, uh, heat the Met are under. But what we're trying to do is, is work together, aren't we? Security, corporate consultants, government. We're all trying to work together to send out clearer messages with that in mind and the kind of clearer messages that you think are worth talking about. What's your plan for this year and what do you wanna achieve? Wow. That's, that's like one of those list conversations, isn't it? Where, where you get in the lift and, uh, Richard Branson comes in and says, you know, what do you do traveling to the fourth floor? And you've gotta give, you gotta give it's called an elevator pitch. An elevator. That's the one, yeah. Called. My, my plan is, is I don't want to sit on, uh, my master's degree. I want to, With, with as ma made as much capabilities as I can. You know, people often just do a master's at MSC behind their name, and then they, they just sit back because, you know, they've done it. I want to actually get my message out there to, to the security industry and to, to just normal members of the public. And I ask, one of my main names is to elevate the actual role of security officers. I think it's to train them to be able to spot behaviors and you know, security has no real, uh, progress. It's just a job. Huge transient workforce. Why don't we make it a career? Why don't we. Aspire to them to be a special observation team, for example, where they can, two or three years, they can get promoted like, like you do in the police. You, you do different courses, you upskill your specialize. Mm-hmm. And why, why don't we have that? So my, one of my main objectives is, is to create a specialist field within the security industry that people can aspire to and, and actually elevate themselves. Which then the, the best re out out result from that is to actually start to be able to, to. Support the broad range of lower level security operations. Yeah. And it's, it's not a wealthy part of the business for sure. It's the cybersecurity's poorer sister, uh, physical security and certainly, certainly looking at the front line, but prevent, Before we finish up, prevents done really well. And so is act in relation to the, the, the module of the power of Hello. So a lot of security officers now feel a lot more comfortable approaching someone that maybe is acting a little bit out of the ordinary. And, and, and that power of hello is, is fairly disruptive, isn't it? To somebody who's perhaps performing somehow. Star reconnaissance take us. Yeah. And, and, and exactly. It's, it, it's about making a, you know, a command decision on an observation if, if a security officer feels that a behavior is not right in a setting. You know, I would say to you, what do people look like in coffee shops? What do people look like in airport departure lounges? You, you get a pattern if a security officer actually sees a behavior that is is unusual in that. Then they have to be trained to actually approach in such a way that, that you may not have to make contact just a presence in that area. Remember, we're watching behaviors. So if a security personnel is within the 10 meter range of somebody that they suspect, another team member should be watching that behavior to see if it changes because of that security presence, you know, uh, Uniform security officers are deterrent and so they should be, but it should also be used as an intelligence platform for the security to elevate. And then, you know, I'm sure any of our police colleagues listening to this would rather have somebody report a behavior that they believe is higher risk and the police to check it out, or for security to approach and just ask open civil questions, which I know the ACT system. Actually gives them, is just approaching and civil decency to upset their plans, if you might. That whole idea you have there about having some, having a colleague watch another colleague approach, somebody using the power of hello. That's really good. Uh, take home from this, Andy, because I think a lot of people wouldn't think to do that. Wouldn't think to see if there's change in behavior. What what other sort of tips without giving away all of your secrets what other sort of tips have you got for that typical sort of frontline security, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Great, great questions. You Lando, and you're testing me here. One thing we always talk about is, is the. Alright. Now the gate isn't the gate that you walk into your house from if the gate is how people walk. Okay. So how people walk when, when. People are walking towards a security point or a security measure. If you, if you sit and watch people in a, in a shopping center and to get your colleagues to start, start to frame into what I'm talking about. If you watch people who have been to a shopping center before, That they know if you watch them, they walk from A to B, they're going to buy a new shirt, a new jumper, a new handbag, a new pair of shoes, and they walk with what we call purpose. Does that make sense? Yes. If you imagine if our listeners, if you imagine going to a shopping center that you, you're not really aware of, its layout. You am. Mm-hmm. Don't go purposeful to somewhere you amble until you've, oh, look, there's, there's a shop there you wanna go into. Yeah. It's the same in a security setting. And, and it's because what we call a troubled. If somebody is in a location and they're not walking from A to B and they are what we call rambling, basically what happens is they're their, their psychologically, their mind is active. So if they're approaching a security setting and their pace slows, it means their mind is actively thinking, how do I bypass this security measure? So what I train people to do is look for their pacing. Uh, is does their pace slow as they're approaching a security point? And that's what we call the gate. And that's, that's another effect. Again, it's all about special observations, watching people and, and it's all about. Accelerating the behaviors so that we get a significant, uh, identification, which therefore we, we then hand over to the police or hand over to a more advanced team, if you like, and more questions at the security point. And it makes. Everybody better witnesses when they know this as well. Andy, doesn't it? It's absolutely. You know, we discussed this in the pre-chat that you know, quite often a lot of our people on the frontline, they'll know something's not quite right. They might have done a course on it, but, but they can't necessarily justify why this cause for alarm in relation to that behavior. But knowledge is power, isn't it, in the sense of what you've just described. You asked me as well in a previous conversation, you know, what sort of behaviors would I adopt if I was looking to not. Uh, noticed by like if I was surreptitiously up to something and I didn't want to be seen. It's interesting to think like that because you start thinking yourself, what would I do to not draw attention to myself? and, and that's another observation to make, isn't it that if we put ourselves in the shoes of that individual, we can spot that behavior a lot better, right? Absolutely. And I give, I'll give you another example. Yo Lando is, is. If you're in a situation, you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing. Let's say you're, you're a terrorist or you're doing a hostile reconnaissance, is your thought process on eating food or drinking? No. So what happens is the body naturally instinctively says, I don't need food. I don't need ingestion, so I'm going to actually shut down my ingestion system. What that does is it makes the mouth dry, which in effect I then try to. Wet my lips, wet my mouth. And we all know what you got when you got a dry mouth. You start licking your lips, biting your lips, and, and putting spittle into your mouth. And that's because the body is saying, I don't need an ingestion system whilst I'm doing this hostile act. So again, it's basic little things that security personnel can say, right? I'm not happy with this presence or her presence. Look what they're doing. They're biting their lips. They're licking their lips quite rapidly. They could be under the effects of drugs, of course, but. It's something that you concentrate on and we just go down through the whole body looking for those behavior. And to your point about gate, so important with l with London, because look, London might be a, a, a big beast of a location, but 99% of people are doing the same thing, right? Mm-hmm. They're all walking. Uh, because especially if you are near tube stations, you know that. There's a certain influx and people will walk a certain rhythm. There's a certain pace. Everyone's going walking with purpose, like you said. And even if you're in touristy areas, there'll be lots of people standing around and just meandering, but they're looking at things or they're eating something. So there's just very common behavior. So even though it's a massively congested place, it's easy to see people standing out, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And one, one of the things that we train is we always ask which way? How do you read? If you read from left to right. Okay. And most security personnel will look at a scene from left to right in the scene you're describing of people in a tourist area. So what we train the, the security personnel to do is, is actually read the opposite direction, is read from right to left. What it does is it slows the brain down. I mean, all of our listeners will, will have written a, a statement or a a paragraph, read it a few times and sent it, and there's a spelling mistake in there. Mm-hmm. And actually proofreaders read text from the opposite direction. We naturally read because it's easier to pick up the spelling mistake, reading it from right to left. So we train security personnel to actually observe something from right to left and actually improve their observations by 40%. So we're actually stopping them from just scanning naturally where they miss things because the brain fills information in, you read from right to left, and it starts to slow their brain down and your observation down so you can pick out certain things and behaviors in crowds. And then, For security deployment resource, you can put teams in to actually interact, to approach, to say hello, you know, can I help you, et cetera, and all the good things like that. Yeah, absolutely. Phenomenal. Look, incredibly useful. Some really good life skills there. And thank you so much for taking us through that. Just one question I ask a lot of people this, Andy. What keeps you awake? What keeps me awake at night? Probably my cat to be honest. He jumps up quite, I've got a man coon, who's actually in front of me now. What keeps me awake at night? Really good question. I, I don't know, really. I don't, I I, maybe you're sleeping. Well, that's the point. No. 1, of, one of the, the best questions you said on this, this, uh, discussion, Yolanda, is, is what's my objective going forward? I think that probably keeps me awake. I'm always searching for, to bring something better to the market. You know, it breaks your heart to see the Sarah Everard and, and all of the, the fear that. You know, our people fear. If I can bring something that actually starts to detect behaviors, particularly in the terrorism field of work and break up um, terrorist cells by detection, then my job's done. So probably, probably that one I guess, but it's not an everyday thought. And curiously, next year we're going into an election year, and election years always tend to provoke some sort of terrorism activity, especially in our cities. It seems to be something that goes in line elections and terrorism attacks. But I think when you look at all of the programs and all of the engagement and the, the, the way that everyone's collaborating now, so much more, we've got to be surely a lot more resilient than we were, especially, you know, pre 2005. Absolutely. And, you know, and not to be political, but I think typically what happens is in every five years or so, maybe a change of government, there's a change of. So I think whatever side you're on, conservative or labor or liberal Democrat, there's gotta be a single message. From all of the politicians that that attack terrorism, that attacks risk. If you, if you look as an example, Martin's law. Yes. You know, new Security Minister resigned, new security, new home secretaries, probably three or four since that's been shelved. So yeah. All the good work that the team have done within Martin's law. You know, in my opinion, one of the strongest things in Martin Luther's buffet behaviors, reading. To disrupt. And that, that's just my angle on that really. And it, and it's really working with, with a home secretary or a security minister that builds on what we've got. We've got a great system in place, you know, the Prevent Act, et cetera. It's a great system. It's just continuity and building on that to be the best security teams in the world. I'm, I'm British and proud of it. Uh, Fagan's been on the Security Circle podcast and I've asked her lots of questions about her journey, you know, because she could have just become, she could have just become a very angry, emotional mother and not really done the extraordinary work she's done in literally changing our industry from the outside. And I said to her, you know, I've been in this industry for 15 years. I said, we've never been able to do what you are doing. And the remarkable thing about Martin's law is that not only is it scalable, which makes it apply and be very relevant to almost every organization with a public footprint it's also something that everybody I know has bought into. There's not one security professional that thinks it's not worth its way in gold, and just getting that buy-in means, It's been a long time needed. Right. And absolutely. I've never met the lady yet. Bless her. I mean, it's a horrible journey. She's actually got the same masters as me in terrorism studies. I do and I have Lias quite strongly with Nick Aldworth, who, who probably. Works closely with them. Yeah. Yeah., and again, I, I go back to that. Why don't we make the security industry a career where people can progress? I think the time is to upskill clearly, and the police have a horrific job, you know, tracking and breaking. So why don't we use the thousand security personnel that we work with? Yeah. To upskill them to be a bit more intelligent to their Yeah, I agree. 100%. Yeah. if I can help you with that and do you let me know? Absolutely. Was this, this, uh, podcast may give people some ideas, you know, so. Absolutely. I, I see It's not the first time we've actually come up with ideas, but listen, thank you so, so much. I really appreciate all of your time. We'll put the link to your, Up, uh, which is called Walking Tool. And will also uh, put a link to Passport to Protection as well, which is the one that I've got. And I think it's fabulous. So, uh, for anybody that wants to get in touch, Andy Neil is on LinkedIn and, Andy, thank you so much for your time today. Brilliant. Thank you for that. Appreciate your time.