Safety and Security Measure
Mega-events are high-profile, deeply symbolic affairs that typically circulate from host city to host city. The classic examples are the Olympic Games, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cups and Commonwealth Games (Roche 2000). Often, mega-events involve a level of organization unmatched outside of wartime and planning that requires significant alterations to the governance of the host city or country. Despite the evanescent nature of the actual occasion, mega-events also continue to resonate for long periods. As Roche (2000) argues, mega-events are short-term episodes, yet hold long-term consequences for their hosts. Highly prized by national and civic planners, they are simultaneously political, economic and cultural happenings that can reap a windfall of publicity and initiate infrastructural projects long on the municipal ‘‘wish list.’’ Mega-events are also critical junctures where globally mediated urban identities are refashioned, future directions forged, and past lineages overwritten in a context of intense global inter-urban competition (Harvey 1989; Peck and Tickell 2002).
The poor security arrangements during the Olympics in 1972 could have been a motivation in itself for the terrorists to attack the Olympic Village. Moreover, ensuring security at these events has been a major ongoing concern at that time and appears to have taken on a new meaning since the events of 11 September 2001 (hereafter 9/11) (Whelan, 2014) .
From the mismanagement of the Bavarian police in Munich in 1972 until today we now have new national antiterrorism measures in former Olympic host nations, new anti-terrorism cooperation between Western and Eastern countries and a different security cooperation approach between developed and underdeveloped countries. Since that, terrorism and counter-terrorism have become defining political issues of the last decade (Selliaas, 2012). In an analysis of terrorism and Olympic Games we can also make a distinction between counter-terrorism and anti-terrorism. Terrorism can be defined as the ‘deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change’ (Hoffman, 1998). Counter-terrorism can be defined as active operations intended to pre-empt, neutralize, or destroy terrorists and their organizations – they are offensive measures. Anti-terrorism, by contrast, comprises defensive measures taken at, for example, borders, ports and airports, designed to detect and stop terrorists in their tracks (Hoffman and Morrison-Taw, 2002; Naftali, 2005).
The terms ‘counter-terrorism’ and ‘international terrorism’ entered the vocabulary of the Washington administration in 1972, as the government instigated its first groups to manage the problem.
Four years later of the disaster, 1976 in Montreal, there was an increased focus on security. No expense was spared and the security organization in Montreal provided a basic schema for all subsequent Olympic venue security operations. It also marked the increasing prominence of electronic surveillance (Fussey, 2011; Taylor and Toohey, 2007). In the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games and the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games, private security agents were deployed extensively and became a prominent feature at the two subsequent Games in the USA (Atlanta 1996 and Salt Lake City 2002) (Fussey, 2011). In the Moscow Games of 1980 we witnessed a new cooperation between the communist countries of Europe and new African countries; the Games held in Seoul in 1988 fostered new cooperation structures between Asian countries and Asian and Western countries. In the Barcelona Games of 1992 we saw the birth of the cooperation between the Olympic movement and the UN based around the conflict then taking place in the Balkans (Loland and Selliaas, 2009).
It can been seen that, the four issues of budget, security personnel, cooperation with others and technology to be concerned and enhanced.
To begin with, it can obviously that the budget is gradually increased, rising expenditures on security demonstrate the intensification of the issue of sport and security. For example, while security spending at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics came to US$66 million, the budget for London 2012 stands at a projected US$1.7 billion (The Telegraph, 9 September 2010; Daily Telegraph, 11 December 2007). Such expenditures are realized through the mobilization of more security personnel, such as the 60 000 additional police officers to be drafted in for London 2012, and the implementation of high-tech security technologies. Moreover, In Brazil 2014 World Cup, 64 football matches were played across 12 host cities, spread across the fifth largest country in the world. The response from the government was unprecedented spending on security. The total cost, in excess of R$1.9 billion ($855 million), is nearly four times as much as South Africa spent on the 2010 World Cup. It included the deployment of 150,000 police and military personnel, and 20,000 private security guards across the 12 host cities (Minogue, no date). At the same time, Brazil’s security spend on counterterrorism, focused on weaponry. The Rio Times reported that it included the purchase of “50 bomb disposal robots, two R$27 million [$11 million] Israeli drones, and facial recognition goggles, which capture 400 facial images per second as far as 12 miles away” (Minogue, no date).