Security in place for Sochi Olympics
Posted February 2, 2014 1:59 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SOCHI, RUSSIA (NEWS1130) – There are over 100,000 police, soldiers and security forces on the ground in Sochi but will they keep the Olympics safe?
The man who was part of Vancouver’s Olympic security says having eyes in the sky is more important than all those boots on the ground.
Alexander Fernandes with Avigilon says the biggest part of security is having cameras to find the trouble spots before they get out of control. “The Olympics, when we had it in Vancouver, went off without a hitch, whereas there was a similar number of people in the downtown core during the Stanley Cup playoffs and that got totally out of control and by the time police responded it couldn’t be contained anymore.”
Fernandes says the biggest challenge facing officers is the amount of data they will have to go through hourly. “You can never have enough people to watch everything, so it’s going to be somewhat selective. They’re going to scan areas that they think are high-risk, look for abnormal behaviour, or look for high-risk situations.”
He says they’ll be limiting vehicles and removing all garbage cans in Sochi to reduce places that bombs can be hidden.
