(Mumbai) Attackers expose luxury hotels' vulnerabilities (security guards can't carry guns)

Just as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have had a lasting effect on aircraft cockpit security, with reinforced doors separating pilots from passengers, the deadly terrorist attacks that started Wednesday at the Oberoi and Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotels here could leave an enduring imprint on the design and procedures of luxury hotels.

With the death toll approaching 200, and with more bodies still being found at the Taj, the attacks have underlined the vulnerability of five-star hotels to determined attacks by determined gunmen armed with military assault rifles, as well as the attractiveness of such targets to terrorists.

The Oberoi Group had no warning of the attack here, however, Oberoi said, questioning what any hotel operator could do to withstand such an assault. "The authorities have to help us," he said, by preventing such attacks from occurring at all.

The Oberoi Group employs many plainclothes security officers in its hotels,but these are unarmed, Oberoi said. Obtaining a license for even a single officer to carry a gun is extremely difficult in India, which has tight gun control laws.

Particularly at the Taj, the attackers seemed to have a detailed knowledge of the building's layout, Dutt said. They kept moving among large halls with multiple entrances, not allowing themselves to be cornered in rooms with no other exit.

By contrast, the commandos and the police had old blueprints of the massive, labyrinthine hotel that did not clearly show how passageways were connected or blocked or recent construction, Dutt said.

Even in this country, you can’t expect the guy next to you to have a gun just because of the 2nd amendment (I’m in favor of doing more to promote guns like in Switzerland)...but at least you’d expect the security guards to have guns!

Well,your expectations are wrong;since the 1960s at least one owner of a large security guard firm has waged a campaign, quite successfully, to disarm security guards!This is something he is quite proud of! The bigger the security company,the less likely they will provide or allow armed guards.The Pinkerton company was also bought up in the 1980s by a California anti-gun businessman,and soon guns began to be removed from posts,a decade ago a Swedish firm has swallowed Pinkerton/CPP.Most security guards are warned their employer will fire them and file charges if the guard is found carrying ANY thing deemed a weapon,including large flashlights,pocketknives,etc.ONE guard manual I studied forbade steel-toed footwear on that premise! In my experience,it is the small security operators that still provide or hire armed guards.They can be very selective whom they hire.

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