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People and Pop Culture

Plugged In: Michael Downing, Prevent Advisors

Michael Downing recently joined Prevent Advisors as executive vice president after retiring from the Los Angeles Police Department, where he spent the past 35 years and specialized in counter-terrorism. Prevent Advisors, a division of Oak View Group, consults with teams and facilities on security measures as well as non-sports venues. Downing joins a group that includes his former boss, ex-LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, plus Florida Panthers Executive Chairman Peter Luukko and intelligence experts Mark Camillo and Michael Rodriguez, all of whom sit on the company’s board of directors. Military veterans Chris Robinette, the company’s CEO, and Ben Tolle, its chief operating officer, co-founded Prevent Advisors.


What we’re seeing now is active shooters, vehicle-ramming techniques … and the use of drones used overseas and weaponizing those drones. For those kinds of things, I think there’s a strategy we can put in place to harden that target and take away that opportunity.

Photo by: OAK VIEW GROUP

On his decision to join Prevent Advisors: Chief Bratton talked to me about this opportunity previously [before retirement] and it was kind of in the back of my mind. Then [Oak View Group co-founder] Tim Leiweke talked to me about his vision for Prevent Advisors, as kind of an extension of what I had done for the last 10 years of my assignment running the counter-terrorism bureau. I thought that my network of sources around the world and the technology we brought into LAPD and the partnerships we have in the private sector was a good fit.

On his touchpoints with security at sports venues while at LAPD: When the intelligence cycle told us stadiums were going to be a target because they were soft, we would put our capabilities in place, shift personnel resources and develop strategies to protect those [buildings]. Soft targets include any mass gathering point where there’s less security and people aren’t switched on to the idea that there could be a small-arms attack or a vehicle ramming, which we saw at Westminster [in London] with the bridge near Parliament. In Nice, they mowed down 89 people.

On the things venues lack for new-age security: There’s a lot of focus on cyber right now. When I was with LAPD, we built the Cyber Intrusion Command Center, the first of its kind in the U.S. by a municipality. We put sensors on all 24 [city] departments so we could identify who the attacker was, what they were attacking and the intent of the attack. You don’t really know until you roll over that rock and look underneath it. There’s a lot of [terrorist] activity around social media campaigns — a lot of “how to do it” — so we need to be ahead of that strategy and develop the technology to keep it out. The issue of encryption and going dark is a real challenge for us and we need to stay ahead of the threat. Crowd sourcing, data mining and the partnerships we have with the intelligence community are key to keep us [aware of] what they’re targeting and what we can do to prevent it.

In turn, the things venues are doing correctly in security: They’re becoming smart about gaining access to additional measures [such as Safety Act] and what it does for liability protections. And they’re getting smarter about technology. In the old days, it was checking bags. Now, they’re using not just metal detectors but more integrated systems that are more holistic. They’re looking to develop solutions that tie into the intelligence community, and to build that capacity and those mechanisms to provide the safest secure environment possible without disrupting the fan experience. That’s the other half of it: How do we all work together to increase safety without deteriorating from that experience?

— Don Muret

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