The Security Circle
An IFPOD production for IFPO the very first security podcast called Security Circle. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and is an international security membership body that supports front line security professionals with learning and development, mental Health and wellbeing initiatives.
The Security Circle
EP 048 Darryn Frost 'Narhwal Tusk' Guy, Tackled a Terrorist, London Bridge Terrorist Attack Nov 2019
Bio:
Darryn Frost QGM
Moved to UK from South Africa in 2005.
Worked for PR Newswire, then moved to Northampton Probation as Business Development Manager.
In 2010 moved to the London Head Office for Prisons and Probation as National Communications Manager.
Managed many internal campaigns, such as suicide prevention and the 10 Prisons project for then Prisons Minister Rory Stewart.
Was involved in the Fishmonger’s Hall attack in 2019 and set up Own Merit CIC with cofounder Steve Gallant in 2021.
Darryn Frost QGM | LinkedIn
www.OwnMerit.org
Fishmongers' Hall: Usman Khan unlawfully killed Cambridge graduates - BBC News
Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers
Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers and we are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members mental health and well being. Well, as you know, I promise to bring you a special guest every single day, and we have a very special guest today, actually. How to introduce this very special person, Darren Frost, who is probably most notoriously known for being a very effective bystander on the day of the London Bridge attack. And for those of us in security, this will be a day, certainly for those in London. That everybody will remember very well because a lot of our positions and responsibilities involved invoking certain emergency procedures. First of all, Darren Frost, thank you so much for being a guest on the Security Circle podcast.
Darryn Frost:Thank you. Thanks for your welcome.
Yoyo:Well, you know, um, most people who, uh, listen, know that we did an incredibly good, uh, podcast from Travis Frayne. And, you know, I think the most important thing around these sorts of things, Darren, is that we all hear and see what goes on in the media. Thank you. And those people in the security industry have certainly a broader insight to the mechanizations behind these types of incidents. But to everyday people, you know, we only get to really be influenced by what we see in the media. So really, let's remind people what was very significant about that day and your role there in London. What do you normally do in London
Darryn Frost:on a morning? Uh, well, so my role, uh, is as national communications manager for prisons and probation service. So it's part of the Ministry of Justice. And, uh, my role was quite varied. I got to engage in a lot of national campaigns where we try and influence things across the system. Now, it's a very big system. If you think there's like 45, 000 staff across prisons and probation, uh, there's, oh, like 100 and 100 and Prison sites, and then there's even more probation sites. Um, and then there's also approved premises, which so if you can think of the number of sites we have across the country, it's it's just a lot. Um, but even more than the number of staff, we've got a number of people who we supervise. So, um, as is seen in the press, we've got around 85, 000 prisoners and that number is going up. Um, yeah. And then there is about 250, 000 or so people on probation supervision at any given time. So my role was really looking at national trends and, uh, working with the senior leadership to try and impact things through communications. Uh, one of our most successful campaigns was around 2016, 17, uh, the rates of suicides, which they call self inflicted deaths within prison was just rocketing. Um, And so we did a a large national campaign with a lot of partners within the prisons, engaging staff, but also people in prison. Um, and after a year and a half campaign, we managed to reduce those suicides. And for me, every life saved is a huge success. And we reduced those suicides compared to the year before by about 70. Um, and that impact on the individuals, the families, the other people on the wing, the staff, staff, it's discounting the financial savings because each, um, each inquest into those deaths and the related processes costs over a million pounds per case. But the emotional cost is what was really important to me. So yeah, that was my, my role. And from day to day, it would vary. I'd be in head office and putting out posts and communications on the intranet, but I'd also be going out into prisons, um, where I'd be doing focus groups with staff with prisoners, understanding their situations, understanding from their perspective, what is or isn't working. And how we could change that. And then that day on London Bridge was an event, which was a new, really, um, well, it was five years, the five year anniversary of learning together, which was a wonderful initiative between Cambridge University and the prison service, where they were having serving prisoners and Cambridge Law students study together. And that's really breaking down those barriers between class and everything else. and except for this one individual, it was highly successful. Yeah, it's
a
Yoyo:shame, isn't it? With all things, when one individual ruins it. And I, and, and, and the irony is we never really heard about that project or the benefits of it until this awful incident happened. What sort of great things came about from such an initiative,
Darryn Frost:Darren? It's interesting that you say you never heard about that. And that is. Typical of government departments is that they are cautious about being attacked by the media for anything that they put their neck out on, anything that they do that is different. Um, and it's a real pity because then we can only go backwards if we're not pushing forward. So a lot of this stuff is happening, but it's behind a curtain, a dark curtain, um, for learning together. Wow. Those guys were getting degrees. Firstly, for their self esteem, for their motivation. It's incredible. They were meeting people like Jack Merritt, like Saskia Jones, um, and others. They were meeting judges. They were meeting people who they would have generally seen as being on the other side, the opposition, the oppressors. And reforming their own mindset about these individuals. So humanizing their own oppressors. And that really does break down those barriers when you start seeing people as humans, and you start to understand their perspective. So, yeah. Absolutely life changing for a lot of the guys, but like in the case of John Crilly, you need to follow up on that. So once the course is over, what happens then? So there is a big risk. And John talks about it in the inquest that, um, he was lifted up by this program. He completed a law degree. So he had an expectation that when he was out, he would then be able to get a junior role in a law firm, but that didn't eventualize or materialize. And that is a risk then, because then he gets dropped back down even lower, everything drops back down, and I feel a lot of this is what happened with the attacker on that day. He got lifted up through the program and then dropped right back down to an even lower place. So I think there's a risk about raising people's expectations too high. Um, so maybe that's where the program might have overreached a little bit. Um, but yeah, so that's the question.
Yoyo:No, I've got a great follow up question. So, um, the fact that this, this man, Jack, sorry, who, who was it? Remind me of the name of the man who went through, who did the law degree.
Darryn Frost:So, uh, John Crilley, who is John Crilley,
Yoyo:so John Crilley's done a law degree. He's obviously found himself previously on the wrong side of the law. He's trying to better himself. There's a promise of great hope and expectation when he comes out. He can't obviously work as a lawyer because he's a, he's got a criminal record. Is that the only thing that was preventing him from moving on in
Darryn Frost:life? There's a lot of things, in my opinion, that prevented him. Um, he's had a chaotic lifestyle. He may not have the best interpersonal skills. So there's a whole raft of different things. Um, I think the only job, so Learning Together did try and support him, but I think the only job he could get through their assistance was a part time pot wash at Cambridge University. And so for me, like, I think anyone could see, like, how that would drop you down. Below it would really shatter your hopes, dreams and aspirations. Um, John still complied and he was still a good guy and he assisted us on the day on London Bridge to apprehend the terrorist perpetrator. So there's a lot of good that came through that. Um, and there's a lot of other other issues there. So, well, John did an amazing thing by getting his law degree that he still never had all that mental health support from his initial trauma as a teenager. And so things come back to, uh, prior experiences. So, um, he's had a life in and out of prison since he was a teenager. And now he's a 50 year old man, and he spent more time in prison than out. And, um, He was his conviction was quashed and because he was convicted of joint enterprise, and so he feels really wronged by the system and understandably. So he got, he spent something like 14 years in prison for a crime. He didn't commit that was then ruled unlawful that he was convicted, but he, he got that impossible offer. Either, um, uh, say you were guilty for manslaughter and we release you today, or don't and you may stay in prison for another, I don't know what it was, like 14 years or whatever. So with that impossible situation, he chose to plead guilty, but yet you can see how he feels frustrated. So yeah, there's a lot of complicating factors. But he has that self pride about he has a law degree and he got through that and he showed that he could work through a long period of time with difficult, challenging work and achieve something great. Yeah. Cause there's a
Yoyo:lot of bright people that couldn't do a law degree. You know, that's quite a special set of skills and a huge dedicated to dedication to reading as well.
Darryn Frost:He's got cognitive abilities. He's a smart guy. Yeah, and
Yoyo:critical thinking as well. So look, I mean, you've opened up a can of worms here because you've got the best position of all to see what's not going well with the prison system, right? And I know there's no magic wand, and I think a lot of people genuinely believe in, you know, the penal system being there for genuine punishment. Nobody wants to see anybody who's innocent go to prison. And yet there are so many different facets to this. It's so incredibly dynamic. If you could wave a magic wand with your experience, what three things do you think could be implemented realistically that could make a great impact?
Darryn Frost:That's a great question. Um, and there's a lot of people who Have provided solutions to this. And for me, the key here is about what's the purpose of prisons. So the primary purpose should be to be keeping the public safe. So the people that we put in prison should be those who are at risk of causing harm to the public. So us, uh. Putting people in prison for financial crimes is really so you think of the impact on society for this, for an example, one, you take away the breadwinner from their family that could potentially put kids into the care system, which means then we have to pay for kids in care systems. Um, it means that we also have to pay for that individual to be in prison, which costs about 47, 000 pounds per year. Um, and it takes up prison places, which means there's. pressures on the prison system, so we've got no place to put in the dangerous people. So for me, if you think of a financially motivated crime, such as, I don't know, insider trading or something like that, think of what their motivators are. It's money. So what's a better punishment for them? Well, financial sanctions, things that say, okay, well, now you have to work and you have to pay X amount of your salary towards the system to these kind of things would be more effective into changing people's behavior than now you put them in prison, you reduce their chance of ever working again, you make it really difficult for them to reintegrate into society, you disrupt their family. So yeah, that's a really simple example of how we're putting the wrong people. We're putting women together. In prison who show no risk of harm. And there's this whole talk about putting shoplifters in prison when the whole issue there is economic and challenges of social economic challenges where women are stealing nappies for their babies and we want to imprison them. We need to look at the record. So yeah, that's the first one. I think we should be using prisons for people who are dangerous to society. Then there's some other simple things like when people are in prison. What do we do with them? Because currently there's so many people in prison that the system is so stretched. That we can't really do much with them. Nothing really meaningful. And what would people want? When people come out of prison, because the majority of those people come out, who would you want as a neighbor? Someone who's gone in for a violent offense, who's had no work done, but just been punished so their mental state deteriorates and they come back out to move next door to you. Do you want that guy? Or do you want someone who's gone in, who's had the programs, and has been taught a skill to look after himself, has been shown how to manage their own emotions, conflicts, and also maybe a skill so that they can get a job and be purposeful and out all day so that they're not just at home drinking or taking drugs or whatever the case may be. I know what kind of person I'd prefer to move in next door to be my neighbor. But we as the public are short sighted because we're so... Punishment bent on punishment. So those are two examples. Um, and then the third is actually a raft of different smaller things. We can very quickly get rid of recent sentenced prisoners who have been sentenced to I. P. P. S. Which is indeterminate sentences, which is a real stain on our criminal justice system, which is things like people. There's a boy who he was 17 or something at the time. He stole a mobile phone. He got a two year sentence. 10 years later, he's still in prison. Real case happening right now. And what happens with these things? Yeah. What happened? Tell me what happened there. So these sentences, um, were created as a public protection thing saying we, we will give people an open ended sentence. So this is worse than a life sentence where there is a dedicated time. So people are serving longer time than murderers. So you then do a crime, you go into prison, you then in a thrown into a situation which is violent, which is so you need to survive. And people will respond in different ways. And if you've not been taught, if you're a 17 year old now, and in a year you move into an adult prison, people are bullying you. How do you respond? You respond with violence. You try and protect yourself. Yeah. And they will only release you if they deem you are safe to be released in the public. And you have to evidence this, but how do you evidence it when you're trying to protect yourself? And so you can't. And so they never, ever, or they won't release that person until a probation officer thinks that they are safe. This probation officer may only see the person once a year or not see them at all. Have a phone call and make a full assessment about their risk. Yeah. And so, yeah. So those things are simple to fix. And then there's a lot of other things with the overcrowding. Those prisoners who are to be deported, we could bring forward their sentences, but the key thing to doing this is if we want to deport people speak to the victims 1st and explain why you want to do that. Because just deporting someone and you've got a victim who committed a crime or a perpetrator committed a crime against you. I think we need to give those victims the choices of if they agree. And if they agree, we deport them early. And the argument for this is saving on our economy, all the rest. And there's a lot of people who would take that offer. Um, and then yeah, so it's, and then it's all about the purposeful training thing, which kind of comes into that second thing.
Yoyo:Oh, I'm quite overwhelmed with what you said, because I knew that this was going to be a beast of a conversation talking about our prison system. And even when I was in the police, I worked on a death in custody. Um, actually it was HMP Rye Hill, it's quite a publicized, um, story about, um, a black man who was found dead hanging in his cell. But he was in segregation, so he shouldn't have had anything that could have been a ligature. He shouldn't have had anything in his room that could, should cause him any harm. And of course, when we went in and we were some of the first on the scene, there were knives in there, there were batteries, you know, all, all and belts. And it was just like complete negligence. So we weren't just dealing with, you know, a very simple case of death by suicide. We were dealing with Gross, uh, corporate negligence and, and I, I found it personally quite an infringement of my civil liberties when I had to hand over my mobile phone to go into that prison every day. Cause I'm thinking, well, I haven't, why should I be punished? I haven't, um, You know, done anything wrong. We have to have my phone taken away and I had to have it locked away and everything like that. And I think just because of the unsafe environment that you're going into, and there were certain areas as women that we weren't allowed to go because the abuse and, uh, You know, the derogatory behavior would have just been so bad. So it's a real, you know, even from a policing perspective, it's a whole other world that I used to leave. I think about three months that project went on and we had a situation room in there. So we were doing lots of things to do with the investigation. But, um. I came away thinking, you know, I'm happy to go back to my life and I think I'm not the type of person that would do anything to be in there. So I was quite happy that I was on the right side of life. But never forget, I mean, you must be going into prisons a lot. How does it affect you, what
Darryn Frost:you see? Well, firstly, I just want to go back to that. You mentioned a suicide there and how deeply traumatizing that can be just to go back to my point about those indeterminate sentences. So the suicide rates for men in the UK is the number one killer of men. Um, and then in prisons, I believe it's something like 4 times higher than in the community. And then IPP sentences are double that again. So that's the indeterminate sentences, those people who have given those open ended sentences. Yeah. So they are killing themselves at a rate higher than anything else. And that shows the power of hope and also the damaging thing of having no hope. There is no end date. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. All they're seeing is a dark tunnel. So yeah, that's, that's that point to that. Um. And yeah, I've seen some amazing prisons, and I've met a lot of amazing staff, and I've seen some prisons that are functioning really well, um, but then there's a whole issue about resources, and I don't think there's a lack of resources. We spend a lot of money on prisons, but the problem is that we're spending a lot of prisons on a lot of prisoners, because we have the highest incarceration rate of all the Western civilized countries, um, in Europe, and the United States. It's it's just crazy per 100, 000. We're higher than anyone else. We're closing in on America's rate of of incarceration. So I think we put enough resources in, but we're putting too many people in my third option of improving the system should really have been saying. Let's, uh, end short term sentences, anything under 12 months, there are better options out there that we should explore than imprisoning people. Yeah. So a short month, so a less than 12 month sentence, the costs of going through the court process and convicting someone costs about 93, 000 pounds. Wow. For that process. And then a year of imprisonment costs on average 47, 000 pounds. So if you're thinking per short term sentence, we're talking around 130, 000, 140, 000 pounds per person. There must be better ways that we could help that person look at what their financial situation is. What's their education? What's the root cause of their offending? So yeah, then for that money, we could create training colleges where we remove the person and put them in a remote area where over six months they learn skills, amazing skills, skills where we've got shortages in this country, construction. They can earn a really good wage on that. They can have the skills and the knowledge to progress and purpose. But instead we're putting them in a block in a concrete place with a lot of other people who don't have purpose, who are frustrated. So yeah, there's a lot of a lot of frustration that I've got. But it's also interesting because I meet prisoners and people's perception of a prisoner compared to the actual experience is very different. There are some bad people out there. But most of the people in prison are just, they just don't have any ambition or aims because they don't have any options for that.
Yoyo:Back in 2007, 2008, when we were investigating this death of Michael, it became significant, his race, because all of the other staff and wardens were all white and they were all men and his parents made some very legitimate complaints. That we had to consider in the investigation. He had a history of trying to harm himself. And so there were several red flag indicators that meant he should have been on. Um, he should have had better. care, uh, and better support. Um, you know, the family noticed when they visited, he was becoming more and more emotionally distressed and tearful and weeping. And, you know, this particular case made a huge, this was just one case I was dealing with. It made a huge, a profound impact on my life. And it made me, it made me consider diversity, for example, in the prison system. Is that significantly, um, supportive enough, you know, because,, we noticed there were several, several things. So the hour that he was found deceased, they falsified the records. To show that they'd conducted checks on him, and that was where they all lost their jobs. That was where the criminal act took place, other than the criminal, sort of, uh, corporate manslaughter. But, yeah, we were able to prove that. And I don't think the prison system, and this is leading to a question, has the greatest type of staff working in it either. And I don't think it's seen as a desirable place to work. Is it
Darryn Frost:so? Yeah, that's that's a bit of a challenge. It used to be a career to be a prison officer. Um, and then due to a lot of changes, um, and financial pressures and all the rest, uh, there, there was a big, a big shift. There was a cost saving exercise. There's a number of different factors. Yeah. And it's probably a bit too technical. There was a thing called benchmarking where Alright. They, uh, prisons were being competed on an individual basis and being privatized one by one. And what happened was that would have meant that and after like seven competitions, I think not one was won by the public sector. So the public sector said, look, we could put in our best bid across all the prisons and we could save you the money you're looking to do this and keep prisons in the public sector. The problem with that is that to do that, you had to cut your staff numbers and stuff. And to do that, you had to offer voluntary redundancies. And a lot of the older staff and more experienced took that opportunity to leave the service. And so that was a big challenge at the time. And it's no fault of the prison service. They were in a very difficult position where they. Uh, to make savings, uh, to save the, the public service prison system. So that was, that was a big thing. And then there's the, the training and recruitment processes. Uh, training used to be, I think it was like 11 weeks and that's been reduced to six weeks. Um, yeah, it's really difficult because what do you, you pay people, you make, if you increase the salaries, you make the whole system even more expensive. Yeah, a lot of people draw comparisons with the Nordic states where being, becoming a prison officer, it's like a two year degree that you do. And you, which is very different to our six or seven weeks training. I believe it's six or seven weeks. It might still be 11 weeks. I can't remember. Um, but still compared to a two year training course where you get a formalized qualification afterwards, um, it's a very different approach. Uh, so, yeah, I think that those do cause challenges. There's, um, There's talks of, uh, organized crime planting people in there so that they can then take in substances and all the rest. And it's a totally plausible thing. And it probably does happen to some extent. So, uh, and the other thing is that there's this helicoptering in of power. So if you think of a young officer who may be 20, 21 years old, He's then given the shirt and, and a belt and a body worn camera and told, okay, you go in and you now are the leader of this pack of men, including people who have experience of running gangs, experience of life experience, 40, 50 years old, who's going to the gym three times a week, who is really big and strong and who is really switched on. And you go and tell them they doing something wrong and you go and be the person to enforce this message. It's an almost an impossible task for that individual. Yeah. And, and then that individual has to be befriending, they have to be an advisor, they have to be a counselor, they have to be a supporter, and then also an enforcer of the rules. It's a really, really challenging position. And I've seen officers who do this really well. It's a real skill. But, um, yeah, again, there's no silver bullet for that one.
Yoyo:Gosh, I was caught up with what you were saying there. So. You really are, um, in a world where... You, you must clearly enjoy being up against it and fighting for the underdog, Darren. It's not like you're going to get to the end of your day job and go, Right, that's it. Hold me arms. Everything's done.
Darryn Frost:But for me, for me, it's really interesting because I want to humanise people in prison because that's who I've met. I don't meet the label because I meet people. And I see when someone's jumping on the netting. In a prison, the whole prison gets shut down because this is an incident at height. And so all the staff come out and they'll run out and they'll be like, ah, this person's kicking off because that impacts the officer in a way that is negative to their working environment. And, and when I'm there, I'm saying, okay, but why? And I always ask the question, but why? And then when you listen to the individual and hear their reasoning, they have moved from another prison and their property was sent over. He's asked for his property. It wasn't given to him. He's put in a complaint. His complaint wasn't upheld. He asked again. He has no money with him or anything to buy any of these other things. He's asked again. And then eventually, to get some action, he goes to an extreme. Like jumping on the netting, which he knows will cause a punishment for him, but his complaint will be heard and might affect action. And this goes to an extreme. We are teaching people in prisons to self harm because people will put in complaints, complaints, and complaints, and the system is so overwhelmed that we can't deal with those complaints quickly enough or effectively. So someone will then slice themselves, which is horrendous, but then someone different will come and see them, a nurse or someone, and they will ask. Why did you do this? What is wrong? And then their complaint will be heard. And so, yeah, and so if we ask, but why, and try and understand the motivator for people's actions, I think we'd have a much better system, but it's about capacity and numbers. And that's why I say we need to reduce the prisoner population, keep the resources there that are there, and change the approach slightly.
Yoyo:And we are coming up to the anniversary, aren't we, of the incident that happened in London. Um, and, you know, I'd like to give you the opportunity to talk about what you're comfortable talking about. But I have to say, you know, in the research that I've conducted, all of the, um, I really hate the media a lot of the time, because I wish they would just be honest instead of, you know, dramatizing everything. But there's one thing that they do say that I agree with, and that is that you were certainly a hero on the day. And I know that. Even now, judging the type of character you are, that's not something that, you know, gives you a big head. You come across incredibly humble. What, um, what changed you on that day?
Darryn Frost:Well, generally, yeah, that was a really, really tough day, to be honest. And, um, still even today, I deal with the consequences of that. I've still got, um, challenges. And it's crazy because the... The, the actual actions of that day happened over about seven minutes, um, seven to 15 minutes of like the really traumatic stuff, but it's the impact afterwards that really gets you seeing the families and seeing how they've been effective and that whole community being, being disrupted and. Um, yeah, so, yeah, it changed me in a few ways, but the main thing for me was that, um, that individual's purpose. Was to cause further hatred, division within our communities, um, to make a political statement. And so I took a personal vow, challenge to try and do the opposite. To show the positive sides of that awful situation. And this is really much about John and Steve and Lucas responding with me to tackle that individual. Um, it was about the care that I saw people giving each other. Um, there's a prison officer who then was looking after Saskia Jones, totally unarmed himself, trusting in a prisoner, because Steve Galant was the barrier between this terrorist and him giving care to Saskia. So it was a real royal reversal there, an officer trusting in a prisoner to keep him safe from a terrorist with two knives and a bomb strapped to his chest. And that allowed Adam to give care to Saskia and try and stem the bleeding and all the rest. And for me, that's, that shows humanity. And, and those are the positive things that we should be talking about. Steve, John, after their chaotic lives. Being in prison, being convicted of terrible crimes, but there's that glimmer of hope, that positivity, that rehabilitation can work, and they are willing to put their lives on the line for others. Now that, for me, these are the messages we need to be focusing on and looking at. And I actually think the media have done that. If you think of Fishmonger's Hall, horrendous traumatic experience where two beautiful lives were lost and others were injured and this would have cost the system a lot of money and of course, but the media started off with a sensational and have moved on to the positive of the community of rehabilitation of people coming together and I have this feeling that although that Incident impacted us all and the ripples were felt across the country and will have affected security and a whole lot of other policy, etc. That glimmer of hope for seeing people's potential to change. That's what I want to focus on. And I think the media have done that. So I have to give some credit. The early days reporting were awful. They were reporting on the wrong people as respondents and then contacting the wrong prisoners. victim's family for comment and all these things that I think are immoral and horrendous. But it has progressed.
Yoyo:So in previous podcasts, we've discussed the fact that it's a characteristic of mine to, uh, freeze. I don't really have fight or flight, um, instinctively. I'm a freezer. I'm a freezer. I, and I've demonstrated this with some very funny examples about how I've literally stood and my brain's working out how to get involved with something and my body is standing still. You clearly went straight into fight, not flight. And that's an instinct that you never quite know that you're going to behave that way. Or did you, did you know you had that in you to just literally step in straight away and defend others?
Darryn Frost:Um, I, I kind of know because I've done it on a few occasions in the past, not to the sixth stream. Um, but I always try and protect those people who can't protect themselves. So whether it's a bullying incident or anything like that. And I've had to work myself up in situations to overcome my own fears to address the person. Um, in this situation, I didn't know what I was going to face to be honest. Um, I ran and I, yeah. Got to the stairs and I had seen Saskia seriously wounded, falling onto the stairs and, um, I could see how serious it was. Um, but that's when I was running to go and I was actually going to go to get a, a ladle from the servery and one of the serving lids as a shield. And as I was running that way, I saw the narwhal tusks and I changed my, my tactic to, to take one of the narwhal tusks. So, yeah, I think it's been a process, but I also, so what was interesting is that. And the people who responded, Lucas, I don't know his background, but John and Steve, they were both in prison. So they've been in violent, chaotic situations. Um, so, so they were kind of a bit more used to these violent situations. I went to a boarding school in South Africa, where the seniors would be raiding us, um, weekly and. We're on high alert because they'd be running in with shoes inside their pillowcases and smashing us and we used to have to run a gauntlet through the dorm where they'd have hockey sticks and cricket bats and be whacking us. So I don't know if that was a bit like a training camp for what happened there. We'll never know.
Yoyo:Certainly not an advertisement for boarding
Darryn Frost:schools in South Africa. Um, I don't know. Things have changed. Corporal punishment. So we came through apartheid and stuff and corporal punishment was still allowed back then and it was rough and ready but it built character. But there are some traumas in there that is probably a bit like being a prisoner where you go through some traumas and stuff and that changes your response because you can't just freeze you'll get battered so you have to do something.
Yoyo:In fact, it's interesting, is it? When you look at your career and what you're doing, what you've been doing, where and that background that you talked about, that that's probably led you to sort of control the narrative to a degree, hasn't it? In the sense of where you choose to put your efforts. Do you think your upbringing has shaped you in that way?
Darryn Frost:I don't know if it's so much planning or haphazard luck, but like, it's probably a bit of a mixture of both. But listen,
Yoyo:in the police, you know, there is a defence, sorry, there is a defence called instant arming. What you did in collecting the Narwhal Tusk was a case of instant arming, but it's not often I think it's going to appear on any crime report anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere that somebody instantly armed themselves with a Narwhal Tusk. In fact, I think a lot of people will struggle to know what it is, we'll need to Google it. What is it exactly?
Darryn Frost:So the Narwhal Tusk, so, yeah, I was meant to meet a friend for coffee, and I'd cancelled one or two appointments on him before, so I sent him a message just after the event saying, I won't be able to meet for coffee, I've just stabbed a terrorist with a whale bone. Um, so yeah, even I wasn't sure of the name or its origins, I knew it was from a whale, but I didn't know much more than that. So, a Narwhal is, uh, the unicorn of the sea. Um, it's a whale that has this overdeveloped, it's actually a tooth that comes out as ivory and it's up to two meters long and ivory is like twisted, like twisted plaited hair, um, and it's really solid as you'd imagine ivory to be, but it's quite fibrous in the middle and hollow. I know this because it shattered and I got to see the insides of it as well. But it's, it's used as a lance or a spear. It's really effective. And that's how the whale uses it. It's very much a jabbing, uh, tool. Um, if you think a swordfish, that sort of thing. Um, so yeah, so that's what it is. But what's interesting is it's, it was shrouded in mystery and, um, mystique and was always in the dark ages in Victorian times. It was seen as. A symbol of magical power and those people who had more novel tusks, who are more protected than anyone else. And, uh, yeah, it was both. I went back to get the 2nd 1 after passed the 1st 1 to Steve Gallant. And, uh, I went to get the 2nd 1 and I came back out and I saw the 1st 1 was broken in bits in the hallway. Um, and so that reinforced that I needed to use it as a stabbing tool rather than hitting or anything like that. Yeah.
Yoyo:Um, in fact, um, it's quite extraordinary what happened, isn't it? Because you're with other people that you've never really gone into combat with before. Communications, I'm only going to ask you to sort of try and describe to me in any way how you communicated with each other. Because, and the reason for this question is, from a policing perspective, When you turn up to a melee like that, it's really hard to tell who is in the wrong and who is in the right. And you could see that from the aerial footage. You could see that even the police that were first on the scene, We're struggling to come to terms straight away with who to go in and support and defend. Um, how important is communication at a time like
Darryn Frost:that? I think from the beginning, there was confusion. People didn't know what was going on in the hall. There was a lot of confusion. Some people, there was screaming and noises coming in from downstairs that we could all hear. And It was interesting because one person said it must be kids downstairs that have got in the building. And then there were organizers who commanded everyone to stay in the room and stay where they were. Um, and then there was another scream. And what spurred me into action was there was, um, uh, an ex offender who was a Muslim guy who was sat to my left. And he just looked at me and he said, that's not the screams of children. Um, and then I stood up and it's funny, Steve Galland stood up at the exact same time and him and I ran across our hall to go down and then there's, there's, there's cues that you get, um, that inform you what to do. So a lot of it isn't verbal communication, but witnessing the body language and actions of other people. So, as I was running down the stairwell, there was a woman running up and she was on her phone or. Yeah, I think on her phone, and she was going, Oh my God, Oh my God, and because she did that, I looked over the banister down whilst I was running down, and that's when I saw Saskia falling on the, on the stairs. And I could see she was seriously hurt and Steve was running down the opposite stairwell. So I thought, okay, well, he'll get to her to offer care. I need to somehow defend him and everyone else against whatever's doing this or whoever's doing this. So you're taking visual cues the whole time. And then when Steve and I were down, um, facing the, the, the terrorist, um, he actually like. It's interesting because your senses change and your priorities change. So I went totally deaf except for the things that were really Happening or important to the situation. I couldn't hear the alarms going off in the hall, which someone had pulled and set off the alarms I never heard any of them. I couldn't hear anyone else chattering or anything But then when I arrived and held him, uh, still at the end of this novel task, that's when he spoke to me saying, um, I'm not here for you. I'm here for the police. Um, and then someone behind me said, Oh my God, he's got a bomb, which is really interesting because they would have been chatting and stuff like that. And I never heard any of that. But then when they said, Oh, he's got a bomb that raised a nice, then he's like, and I've got a bomb and he lifts up the knives and it shows us opens his jacket to show the bomb. And, and so yeah, so the communication is feeding in and that was a moment of absolute overwhelming. My brain then, this guy, he's got a bomb directly above him is the hall where we've just come out of and there's 100, 110 people. He's just said that. He's waiting for the police. So for me, his cue is when the police come, I'm going to blow this thing up. Um, and I'm thinking, what do I do? And my brain is reeling. Do I attack? Do I defend? What do I do here? But at that moment is when Steve throws this mahogany chair that he's got in his hands and throws it at the terrorist and it glances off his shoulder. Um, And the terrorist then starts going towards Steve, who now is stood next to me, but it's totally unarmed. And so that's a moment where Steve and I look at each other, and I just offer up the, the Narwhal Tusk to him, keeping the tip by the belly of the, the terrorist. Um, and Steve and I looked, there was no verbal communication, we just looked in the eyes, and I offered the Narwhal Tusk, he looked down and took it. And so we worked without communicating there. And then the same thing happened, I then was now in Steve's situation where I was a meter away, a meter and a half away from a terrorist with two eight inch knives, and I wasn't helpful anymore. So I was like, what do I do now? And so I ran back up past Saskia, um, on the stairs and up to get the second NARWAL task. Um, and that's when people were coming out and they were distressed from the hall because they were coming out of that doorway now. And they saw people who were bleeding and they were really in shock. And my colleague who'd gone there with me, she tried to stop me from going down and I pushed her to the wall. Um, I can't remember saying this, but a colleague of mine said, apparently I was saying, I won't have any of this. I won't let this happen. I won't let him hurt anyone else. I can't recall saying that, but then I took the second narwhal tusk, um, and ran back down. And this was an interesting part because I was shouting to them to, someone was shouting, lock the door, lock the door. And I was shouting, unlock the door, unlock the door, because I was trying to go out with this. And so the doorman let me out. Um. And then I was in total tunnel vision. I couldn't see where people were except for the terrorist. So I followed him down. But as I was going down, John Cridley let off this fire extinguisher. And it was such a startling noise that the tunnel vision, I looked at him and I saw he was there and Steve was there. And they were kind of frozen at the time because Steve had been disarmed from his bit of Narwhal tusk. And John had this cumbersome Uh, fire extinguisher. Um, so they were kind of not sure what to do because they didn't know how to continue. But then seeing me running past with this javelin of a novel task that encouraged them to follow and then they followed with me and then that interaction happens, um, on the bridge. And then you can see a lot of confusion. People were running in from everywhere. And for me, the main Risk where his hands, um, because I didn't want him to be able to slice anyone with these knives. And also I didn't want him to be able to reach the belt to detonate it. So I jumped on him. People were starting to kick him and hit him and I was shouting at everyone. Don't hit him, don't hit him, take the knives off him, because I had his hands outstretched, and for me the risk is number one the knives, number two the bomb. And we had him detained, and my whole body was on him, and people were then standing on my hands whilst I was holding his hands out. So for me, I was trying to communicate to people, and they listened, people did take the knives out, and they were kicking it out of his hands and stuff like that. So that was effective communication, um. And then, then what was interesting was the police arrived and they very aggressively were telling everyone to move away. They didn't know at this time that the guy had a suicide belt. So, I refused to comply because for me the bigger risk is this guy's got a bomb and if I listen to the police... He's going to blow everyone up. That's what he had said. So to me, my thinking was different. So although the police were communicating what to do, I was refusing, um, and this happened for a little while and the police were getting more and more aggressive in their commands. And I had three guns pointed at our heads. Um, and I shouted to the police, um, I won't let go. I won't let him kill anyone else. Um, and this was a really interesting thing because in that moment, Steve Gallant came back into the line of fire with, and he came and he grabbed my shoulder and he said, it's okay now, let him go now, mate, the police are here. Yeah. And I just shrugged him off. But this is a real key moment of communication and like showing. Compassion care and it's like he was trying to return the favor of me passing in the novel task earlier on to save his life or whatever earlier on and him coming back to say, I'm going to help you get out of this but I shrugged Steve off. And then there was a really interesting bit of communication and this wasn't between people but it was, um, I think I might have dislocated the terrorist shoulder in this. Point because now it was just him and I and everyone else had to let go and moved away and I was refusing to let go his hands and him and I was struggling and there was power in his arms. But all of a sudden that stopped and his autopsy came back that one of his arms was dislocated. So I probably dislocated it in that moment. So he then changed his tactic and he just looked up at the closest prison policeman and he said, I've got a bomb. And that's the moment where yeah. I lost what I thought of the control that I had of that situation and the police officer's voice breaks and he shouts out, he's got a bomb, and then it didn't even come out the first time and then the second time he like corrects his voice and he's got a bomb, he's got a bomb, and he keeps shouting that and he tries to pull me off a few times, but in that moment was when I looked down at the bomb and I was so close that in one of the capsules, the cylinders, there was about a millimeter gap And I could see inside and that one looked hollow. And so it made me start to doubt whether or not this was real or not, or if it was amateur. And so I was considering, do I let go now? Because I could hear the panic in the police. And I'm like, am I actually helping here or not? And then there was a second thing that happened was I looked down and there looked like there was a mobile phone or a calculator attached to this contraption. And then I had this thought. Maybe I'm not helping and he's got someone else and alias who can remotely detonate this and in that moment of hesitation was when the police officer pulled me again and I went off balance and because I was off balance, I couldn't. So I thought, okay, let me move. And that's when the police shot him. I thought they'd shoot him in the head, but they didn't. And he was still alive for like 15 minutes after that. But in that moment, there were three bangs and I thought the bomb had exploded. But when I look back, there was no explosion. So I was like saying, it's amateur, it's amateur. I thought those were fireworks and that those cylinders were maybe fireworks rather than TNT. Um, but then I figured out that it was gunshots and I thought, okay, well, they've shot him in the head. And then at that moment I blank out, well,
Yoyo:an extraordinary story. You are incredibly brave.'cause even at the point where you realize he was, he was potentially, um, wearing explosives, you still were very committed and engaged to protecting everybody's safety. That's the incredibly brave thing to do.
Darryn Frost:Well, yeah, I went back again the second time, so, um, Yeah, which may be brave or stupid. I'm not sure. It's probably equal measure.
Yoyo:No, I don't think it's any stupidity involved there at all. And it's phenomenal how You know, you, you were just so committed to trying to keep everybody safe and, and even, you know, I, we could see, you know, from the camera footage that when police turn up, you never know what's going on with that type of event. And the key thing is to try and find out as quickly as possible to keep everybody safe. So, look, it's, it's an incredibly sort of life changing. Experience really and you've talked about how it's really important to have a positive narrative and I really do. I'm very proud of you for, um, having that take on things. Fegan Murray has a very similar. Um, stance, you know, I said to her, why don't you feel angry and start lashing out? And she said, what's the point? What's it going to achieve? And, and do you have a very similar positive attitude? What's next on your agenda now that you have this path that you're on, what is it you want to try and achieve and
Darryn Frost:be a part of? Yeah. So for me. I think that we as a country are taking the wrong approach with prisons and how we're doing that if we want to use punishment. That's fine. But we need to think of the what else? How do we stop that behavior and change that behavior or that outcome? And 1 of the big things. Is we released a lot of prisoners into homelessness and the statistics for that. Um, so there's an issue here that we're short of houses. Yes. And social housing is overwhelmed. Um, and prison leavers go to the bottom of that list because it's not popular to house a prison leaver when there are young parents, single mothers, all the rest. And I totally understand and can sympathize with those. However, the impact of that means that we are creating more victims. So, and that could be those young mothers and others and the innocent people becoming victims and that's, it's a case statistic that, um, people released to homelessness, 67 percent of them will be caught reoffending within the year. And I say caught because I've seen the benefit system and how it works. I would guess that more than 90 percent will be reoffending just to survive. Because there's not enough money in that benefit to survive. It's about, they'd be getting 10 a day and that has to cover accommodation, food, clothing, everything. So for me, I have made it a bit of a mission to say we can and should be housing prison leavers, and I've set up with Steve Gallant, who was there on that day, a social enterprise called OwnMerit. And this is a little nod to Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones and their cause. And so, um, Yeah. And so what we do is we house prison leavers. We make the rent affordable within the universal credit rate. Um, and we're trying to show a model that where if you give prisoners a bit of trust and agency and a framework, you can house them safely in what is basically a normal house, a few modifications with CCTV and stuff like that. And so we're testing this. We're five months in, um, and we've housed five people so far. And what I'm trying to do is yeah. Show a blueprint that says, look, we can house people safely. We don't have to be paying 31, 000 per person per year to have them in approved premises. We just need to change that structure and their thinking about how we do this. So, yeah, that's my, my current mission that I'm on. There are some others which are more security related. So if I am part of an organization called Survivors Against Terror, so Fegan Murray is in that, Brendan Cox is in that, and what we're trying to do is listen to the voices of victims and think of practical ways that we can reduce terrorism. One of our big things there is in the communication and the way that we communicate. Uh, so simple things of like... Putting more of the focus after an event like this onto those first responders onto the people who do react because there were more than us on I incident, there were paramedics who ran into the line of fire. There were police officers who bravely ran in there and they have got hardly any public acclaim and they, they deserve that because that trauma that we went through will be the same trauma. I don't care how much training you've had as an officer. You can't train out trauma responses and human emotion. You can't. So I think. We should put more focus and recognition on people who respond and how they respond and so that you highlight how outside of societal thinking that individual was. Um, so I also think that we should try not to mention the names of that, the offenders, the terrorists, if we can, because I don't want to give them that infamy. There's also things about, uh, what other things? So, in the, in the public about scaremongering. and also division. So if you think of an Islamic terrorist, and this is studied, an Islamic terrorist will get four times more media coverage than any other type of type or form of terrorism. And so you're talking about race in prisons, there's race and reporting racism and reporting and, yeah, there's this whole thing. And what that does is make us As a society, um, fear things disproportionately. We all feel like we're under attack from Muslims. Look at it. Really? It's not the situation at all. And the likelihood of being involved in a terrorist incident is so, so small. And yet the fear level is so, so high. And that's the power of terrorism. And we're enabling this. through our media reporting. And so with survivors against terror, we're trying to, um, so it's a difficult thing. Media wants to sell papers. Best way to do that is sensationalize a story, but that sensationalism then drives fear. Fear drives people, um, reacting in terrible ways. So a huge stain on our society is that after an Islamic terrorist incident, There is a huge spike in hate crimes against innocent Muslims in this country. So vigilante is thinking that they now have a right to attack innocent people. For me, that is. abhorrent. and we don't put enough focus on that. And that is driven by media. Even when the Paris attacks happened in the UK, there was a huge spike in hate crimes. Now you are an innocent Muslim victim of a hate crime. What does it start to do? It drives between you and society. And then that's a road to disenfranchisement. And we are feeding that cycle of hate, which then makes people go extreme and then take out and that cycle. And so that's why I want to break it through the way that we communicate.
Yoyo:The media, and the way they sensationalize, it's like sugar to baked beans, and you might ask yourself, what, what, where is the connection here, but you put too much sugar in baked beans and people don't want the original baked beans anymore, and, and that's the impact, it's very detrimental, and I don't know, I think, I think Everybody I speak to feels the same way and I don't know one person that reads a tabloid newspaper in my vast network. I think it's a general, a generation that reads newspapers. I've started to, like many of my friends, switch off from the sensationalist kind of media. The client, I'll look now at what Google's trying to feed me when I just want to go and do a search and there's something there that it thinks I'm interested in, I just ignore it now. And I think we've just got to be a little bit smart to it, you know, lower those clicks. Don't bite, don't react. If you want to research something, go and research something, look for credible sources. I don't know. I think the media can do an awful lot of harm, but yet on the day it did a tremendously great job in reporting for the benefit of everybody what was happening that was causing a lot of concern. And it's great. You know, if there's a tornado going off somewhere, the media is fabulous. If there's a crisis or a volcano erupting, the media is brilliant. And I just think. Stick to facts.
Darryn Frost:It's difficult in those early days because information is not forthcoming. Um, and they know that there's a situation going on. we as government have a responsibility to give information so that there's no, no further harm or damage to individuals or families or. communities. Um, so there's a bit of a balance there between how much we as an authority in the government provide. There's in, in terms of stopping or even correcting any articles that are going out. Um, so fact checking, but we in government would have to be better at doing that. I think that Yeah, I don't know. In those early days, there was just a lot of confusion and sensationalizing and it's, I understand the media's perspective. And I also know that they need to stay afloat and, um, and make their revenues. So that's all we'd want to put out some guidelines that says. Continue with your, your headlines and your sensationalism. If it is positive, sensationalize the acts of those people coming together. Uh, there's like, sometimes this isn't possible, but for me, I think we should take the approach that Jacinda Ardern did, um, in New Zealand, uh, the Prime Minister then, and, uh, she was talking about an individual as an exile from their community, as an, as an outlier, as a loner. Um, And I think we should do the same in this country where. We don't talk about an Islamist terrorist because then people then associate the word terrorist and Islam. Islam is not about terror. And I think we need to be smarter about that. We should be reporting about a terrorist. It's someone who's outside of our community. Within police and where they're managing that kind of information and where that is relevant. Then, absolutely. But, um, even a right wing terrorist, so if we call it a right wing terrorist, we give his cause credibility, we highlight right wings, and then people, if they want to research that, and no, I think a terrorist, a terrorist says enough. Yes, their causes. So the same as in New Zealand, he had a manifesto. They stopped that manifesto getting out and you stop their messaging. You cut off the cause of that cycle of terror. I think in this country, we could do the same. We could call them a terrorist, a loner, an outlier from his own community and ours because With our case in Fishmongers Hall, there was, um, a cry, again, as there always will be against Muslim and all the rest. But you look, his own community didn't want to or allow him to be buried in this country. No. The Muslims were appalled by his actions. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think those are the kind of thing, and that article got hardly any mention. Yeah. Where's that article saying his community, Muslims, think this was abhorrent? And they do. Yeah. But where is all this messaging? And that's where we need to focus. That's where the power of a community is so much stronger than the actions of one deranged individual. And it
Yoyo:makes me realize, really, if there's an underlying dark motive that when community pulls together, it's kind of contravening the kind of general flow that, you know. Is, is at play. And I see that. And I think a lot of other people will see that, that when you have a community working strongly and effectively together, they become stronger and who, you know, there are darker forces at play that don't want that to happen. Wow. I mean, look, I, I have to kind of wrap it up. I want to give you the opportunity to say anything that you think we might have missed, especially in relation to any of your, like, if you want anyone to reach out, we want to provide the links to all the projects you're working on. So if people want to find out more, they can, but what would be your lasting comment?
Darryn Frost:the thing is, is there's always more than what's on the label. There's always, um, context for situations. Um, and even it's not popular to say, um, and I recognize this, but even in our incident with Fishmongers Hall, and this terrorist causing. untold harm and devastation. There's a journey to that. And that journey, if you look at it, people won't know this. It was revealed in the inquest that when he was 13 years old at school, all his teachers said he was a compliant, quiet kid in the class. Um, but then there were reports of him picking fights with groups of boys at school. Now I went to an all boys school. I mentioned it earlier about being in a boarding school. And in those six years of boarding school, I often saw groups of boys. bullying an individual. I never once saw an individual bully a group of boys. Now you think of a first generation Pakistani boy in a white dominated school and think of his journey. And so here is this boy who then gets excluded from school at such a young age because of these fights. at the same age, another boy, a Pakistani boy, is murdered in his neighborhood and And so these are the messages he's getting, and then he's getting punished by being kicked out of school to keep things from these fights happening. That is the journey, that is the start of someone becoming extreme. And I think there needs to be a little bit of a lens and understanding of that. Because if he was in school, 14, 15, 16, rather than going out and meeting the children of this world and those extreme people where he's being forced into finding community that accepts him, Those are the big risks. Um, in terms of my projects, if anyone wants to go and look up own merit, um, own merit, c i c, uh, I welcome any donations there.'cause I'm trying to house prison levers. I'm doing it all, all of my own back on universal credit, which means I'm making a financial loss all the time. But I think there's a bigger purpose to this overall. and also people can have a look up at, uh, survivors Against Terror and some of the reports that we've put out there, on media reporting, et cetera. I think there's some valuable insights.
Yoyo:Thank you for your service. And I really wish you all the very best for all of your projects that you're involved with. I think you're a remarkable human being, and I really appreciate you giving time today on the Security Circle. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure.