Dubai A restaurant waitress walks into the office of the police team responsible for security duties at the Dubai Duty Free Men's Championships and complains that one of the customers is harassing her. A plainclothes police official accompanies her and the matter is solved amicably.
This is one of the minor incidents which Dubai Police's VIP Protection team, responsible for the security of the venue, the audiences and the VIPs, faces on a daily basis.
Captain Eisa Hamza Ahli, Head of Dubai Police's VIP Protection Section at the General Department of Protective Security and Emergency, is the man responsible of securing one of the town's most popular tennis events, along with his team. He shared with Gulf News the security plan they follow.
"For every tennis championship, we as a VIP protection team start the preparations and planning one month ahead of the event. We hold meetings with the organising committee and study their exact requirements. Then we set our own targets," Ahli said.
The police team also holds meetings with the ushers at the venue to brief them about the security plan and inform them who to contact exactly in case of any emergency.
"The security team usually consists of individuals from different departments including the Operations department, CID, State Security, Traffic police and civil defence. Usually every year, many of the team members remain the same because they have experience, but whenever there are new members they are trained beforehand and are given sufficient information, even about how the game works," Ahli said.
"We do not want people to feel intimidated by seeing a lot of uniformed officers around. Plain clothes officers keep the security and also help people with various kinds of queries," Ahli said. He added that there are 75 CCTV cameras inside and outside the venue. "There is a permanent operations room at the venue round the clock which is connected to the CCTV cameras and is responsible for monitoring inside and outside the venue."
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According to Captain Eisa Ahli, Head of Dubai Police's VIP Protection Section, the current tennis stadium in Al Garhoud used to be demarcated with temporary scaffoldings during matches. "This was in 1993, but with the development of the city and increasing popularity of the game, this current stadium was built which has another 9 secondary playgrounds."
Ahli also spoke of security then. "We did not really have any advanced technology in terms of keeping a watchful eye over each and every corner... However, we developed and started learning from other countries and their expertise in terms of providing security for such big events," he said.
