1. Being an active learner
To develop your plan for managing personal risk from domestic extremism, you need to learn about those risks. You should start by:
- gathering information that will help you to assess any risks that you may face
- identifying your vulnerabilities – weaknesses that domestic extremists can use against you.
This information will help you to make better decisions about what you may need to do to protect yourself.
Remember that the main aim of domestic extremists, particularly animal rights extremists, is to frighten people through harassment and intimidation. Violent attacks as part of a domestic extremist campaign are very rare, but can happen.
In developing your personal security plan you should prepare for all possibilities. However, keep the threat in perspective and make plans appropriate to the level of risk.
Use the news media to keep up to date with about domestic extremism – newspapers, broadcast news and current affairs.
- Stay up to date with news about domestic extremist activity against the organisation you work for and similar organisations, as well as the current national and international climate.
- Keep abreast of local news for information about domestic extremist activity in the area you live in.
Find out about the security measures in your workplace.
- Make sure that you know what to do and who you should contact in the event of a domestic extremist incident. If there is a written security policy read it and keep up to date with any changes to it.
- Attend staff training courses on safety and security at work.
- Attend the health and safety updates and/or briefings that all employers are required by law to regularly provide to their staff.
Deciding what to protect
Identify what you want to protect and the ways in it may be vulnerable to risks from domestic extremism.
What you may want to protect will fall into the following categories:
- People: your family, friends, neighbours
- Physical assets: your home, car, garage, shed – any external building – and their contents
- Information: personal information about you that is publicly available, for example, the electoral register, telephone directories, vehicle registration
- Processes: anything that you do frequently enough to form a routine, such as your journey to work.
There are a number of measures that you can introduce to increase your level of personal security from domestic extremist threats without too much cost.
You will already have physical security measures in place to protect important assets from other threats. For example, window locks, intruder alarms, security lighting and so on.
Ask yourself:
- How does what you want to protect from domestic extremism fit with the physical security measures that you already have?
- Do you need to improve or add anything to these measures to protect yourself from domestic extremism?
- Are there any domestic extremist threats that require specific measures?
You may also need to introduce a number of 'cultural' measures to increase your level of personal security.
The term 'cultural' simply refers your behaviour – how you do things. You may need to change the way that you do some things to protect yourself from domestic extremist risks. An example of this might be the way that you answer the telephone.
Some people answer the telephone by giving their name and number without finding out who the caller is. A cultural measure that can provide protection against risk when answering the telephone is to find out who the caller is before giving any personal information.
Another cultural measure is to park your car in your garage, if you have one, rather than outside your home.
Think about:
Your behaviour and how you do things – at work and outside the workplace.
Ask yourself:
- Does any of your behaviour make your vulnerable to domestic extremist risks?
- What behaviour do you need to change?
- How do you need to change the way you do things?
Developing your personal security plan
Get advice about how to protect your personal safety when you are not at work.
- Contact your local police force Crime Reduction Officer (CRO) for guidance on home security and personal safety.
- Speak to the person responsible for security at your workplace about measures you can adapt for use at home.
Make use of publicly available information.
- Use public information to help you find out about threats and plan for managing risk:
- Get specific information about personal safety:
- Local authority websites and local police force website also provide specific information on personal safety.
Think about:
Where your vulnerabilities are when you are not at work – at home, in your car, on the street.
Ask yourself:
- Do you or the organisation you work for have links to or are seen as having a special relationship with a high-profile individual or organisation that is a domestic extremist target?
- Can your trade union or professional association give you any specific security advice about the domestic extremist threats you may face in your line of work?
- Are there similarities between your vulnerabilities in workplace and vulnerabilities outside in the workplace? What the security measures in place at work for dealing with them? Can you adapt these measures for use outside the workplace?
