Chris Brown was ripped off by a sophisticated gang that put surveillance on him so they could strike his home while he was out.
And now law enforcement sources in LA believe the 26 year-old singer was ‘tailed’ – meaning he was actively monitored by a criminal gang who waited until he was busy with a public appearance before striking… In fact, the source adds there was a person planted in the audience who was ‘keeping tabs on him’. They also suspect that the intruders were known to the singer, who apparently had a habit of inviting virtual strangers back to his abode for post-club gatherings.
This story features infiltration surveillance, vehicle surveillance, and foot surveillance. It isn’t of the level the FBI would dish out, but that just means it should be more detectable – and avoidable. The fewer cars you have, the fewer operators you field, the less training and practice you have, and the less adroit you are at altering your “costume” and your vehicle’s “silhouette” while in the field, the more detectable you will be.
It amazes me that people can rise to the level of multi-millionaire celebrity and yet have no idea of the danger that places them in. My guess is Brown looked at what real security professionals cost, and decided to save money by just rolling with some gangbangers he befriended. The problem is, untrained gang-bangers won’t be surveillance aware. Here is just a partial example of the difference in surveillance-related protective procedures, assuming the gangbangers don’t rip you off themselves:
Rolling with gangbangers:
You’ll drive to the club with your car windows open and music blaring, with a bunch of guys wearing mean expressions who are looking for somebody to jump out at you so they can shoot him or beat him.
Rolling with real security:
Your residence’s exterior perimeter is monitored (cameras and in-person perimeter checks) as your departure approaches and immediately post-departure, to look for unusual vehicular and foot traffic. Your vehicle gets a quick sweep with a field strength meter to ascertain if a “beeper” or live tracker is active on the vehicle. You depart from the house in multiple vehicles with heavy tint so the target’s vehicle cannot be ID’d. On departure, security looks for operators in “trigger positions” with sightlines to the residence’s exit for triggering the follow, “commit positions” with sightlines to first decision points to notify a surveillance team of direction of travel as the target exits the static box around their residence, vehicles exiting “enter positions” who take initial command of the target during the follow, and radio frequencies are monitored for traffic, encrypted or not, timed with departure, as if triggering and committing a follow, or periodically burst, as if transmitting a location of the vehicle from an on-board tracker.
Your vehicles will follow an unpredictable prearranged surveillance detection route which is indicative of a destination change, through an area with obscured visibility, little or no traffic, and a choke point, to ID any tail who follows the detection route to confirm the apparent destination change for their team. Vehicles will part at a prearranged location with little traffic, as security looks for any sudden appearance of new traffic to split the team and follow each car, and any indication of a floating box around their convoy as they spread out away from each other. Cars will follow routes and use techniques designed to be difficult to properly tail without exposure (use low-traffic side streets in neighborhoods with numerous entry/exit points where possible, trap cars behind you at stoplights and traffic backups, then signal one way and go straight, or don’t signal and turn from the wrong lane, etc). Cars will periodically pause to look for air support units aiding a follow, if the target is high-risk enough. Foot surveillance security arrives early at the destination, melding with the crowd and examining sightlines, checking for presences at potential surveillance perches, radio traffic, loitering foot units, carried weapons, passing traffic, unattended bags, or other anomalies indicative of surveillance or attack. Most people won’t look twice at a dirty hipppie sitting on the sidewalk with his back against a wall, and his nose buried in his Iphone, but not your security. By the time you arrive, you will either be clean of surveillance, meaning the only attack that could be launched would be an unplanned attack, or the surveillance will have been made, allowing additional security to be implemented, and perhaps even counter-surveillance to be initiated to identify the surveilling party.
At a minimum, that level of security could be done with four men, or even better three men and one woman, it would add ten minutes to your travel time, and it would maintain the security of yourself and your residence while you are out. It becomes more necessary the richer you get, and the more people find out about your wealth.
Of course if you allow unvetted people, especially criminal gangbangers, into your bubble, all the rest is useless.
As a simple citizen, you probably won’t need all of that. But you will harden yourself by knowing how surveillance works, what surveillance looks like, and exhibiting the two traits surveillance professionals dread – unpredictability and paranoia.
Paranoia is immensely useful. People knock paranoia. They define it as being certain of things which are incorrect, and equate it with stupidity and cluelessness. True paranoia is not certainty – it is the honest recognition of uncertainty. It is not adopting any particular belief without ironclad proof, and absent that proof assuming that every possible scenario is possible. Maybe the car that turns on the road ahead of you as you leave your house isn’t an enter vehicle picking up your follow, but absent absolute evidence it isn’t, maybe it is. If you have a reason that you might be a target, that recognition, and the wariness it produces, could save your life.
In the coming storm, embrace your paranoia, become surveillance aware, never be predictable by utilizing the same routes, and never trust anyone you don’t have absolute confidence in. Right now, criminals have people hired on at companies that courier precious metals, companies that sell them, and other places where they can find out where the valuables people invest in reside, or where they are being shipped to. I know a guy who experienced a failed armed robbery a week after a large Precious Metal delivery. The mole was in the PM company’s shipping company.
If you intend to survive comfortably, there will be people who will intend to take that from you, and they will have evolved ways to identify you and techniques to get it away from you. Once you are identified, the dangerous ones will initiate surveillance, definitely including foot and vehicular, and maybe even including infiltration.
If you are surveillance-aware, then when the apocalypse cometh, you’ll be the guy who survives.
[…] Surveillance – Chris Brown Edition […]