Journey to G4S: Featuring Jeffrey Crewe

Jeffrey Crewe is an Elite Protection Professional and a regional instructor with G4S Canada. He’s a military and security industry veteran, with experience in the Canadian Reserve Force and seven years of service with G4S. We sat down with Jeffrey to talk about his journey to G4S and how he came to be one of G4S Canada’s top trained guards. ......................................................................

At the time I first came to G4S, the Elite Protection division was more in its infancy. It hadn’t had mainstream adoption within the company yet, as there wasn’t a client that warranted full-time EPPs. That all changed when we took on Billy Bishop Airport as a client. Every member of the first EPP team was hired on from military backgrounds, a lot of Reservists, which is my background. The job opportunity itself came down from my chain of command within the Reservists, and the requirement at the time was people who were either past, former, serving, or presently. I jumped at the opportunity and that’s what got my foot in the door with G4S..

An EPP is short for Elite Protection Professional. In basic terms, it’s G4S’ highest level of medically and tactically trained guard. We’re mainly utilized for use-of-force environments, or any environment that requires enforcement or medical response.

One of the biggest tangible benefits of an EPP is their ability for them to operate autonomously. They don’t need to be micromanaged. They can be used effectively as a leadership asset or a bridge to management. In the absence of supervisors or if the scenario is mainly security related, tactically speaking, complete command and control could be given to an EPP. They have all the tools to do their jobs, and also liaise with emergency services - police, fire, ambulance - and get really great benefits out of that.

One of the biggest ones that you’ll notice being around one of our EPP personnel is leadership, it’s something that we hold near and dear to us, because of what we’re expected to do in whatever environment that we are deployed in. We don’t wear the title of EPP lightly.

It comes with a lot of responsibility, just to represent ourselves as an entity the way we need to be. The expectations of EPPs are very high, and the services we provide have to meet them. Leadership is an essential skill because wherever we’re utilized we are always working hand-in-hand with traditional security personnel or other tenants, and that’s exactly what’s expected of us, not just to wear the title of leaders, but lead from the front when it’s actually time for that to happen.

Another extremely important skill is taking initiative and exercising discretion. Professional competence is huge, but between those things, that’s what we hold near and EPPs during First Responder Training dear, or are at the forefront of our minds on a day-toan EPP or not. we all take the same training starting day basis. with the BAP at the basic level, use of force training, and then on up from there. The only thing that sets us apart What does an individual need to have in regards is going farther down that training pipeline than most to experience and certification if they aspire to other people outside of the Elite Protection division. It’s be an EPP? a lot of training! The EPP program has tiers to it. In the elite protection division there’s Elite Protection Professionals and Elite How does G4S help support your training and Protection Officers. It used to be that the standard was development? military or police experience, or in the absence of that G4S has supported me in a number of ways. One of having an educational background in law enforcement the most attractive things to me when I first got the opor security - a lot of police foundations or criminology, portunity to apply for the position was that you spend a paralegal law etc. Now, it’s been opened up to individuals who are senior, trained and knowledgeable security

lot of your time constantly training. That was right up my alley because I’m always pursuing professional development howepersonnel. Currently ver I can. As an EPP, there are a lot of members in the division who worked that’s what’s expected of you. As an EPP you are expectheir way to become a part of the Elite Protection divited to contribute to the next generation of trainees by sion, and it’s mainly been through training. A lot of what helping coach, or even becoming an instructor in any makes us what we are is the G4S training pipeline and given subject matter. going through it from the ground up. Whether you’re

The Elite Protection Professional team act as escorts, help with terminations, or provide securiWhat does an average day in the life of an EPP ty for Annual General Meetings. Aside from the Airport, look like? other tasks we do include close protection, escorts of It really depends on the primary task of that EPP is. So goods, commodities, or people. These come up on a for instance, at Billy Bishop, where our job is enforcecontractual basis, often just for a day. We canvas a group ment of the airport’s grounds, as well as passengers and of individuals who are available and meet the qualificajust about everybody on the premises, you’re looking at tions, because not everyone has the same training or a lot of patrolling and projecting presence. You’ll notice specific skills. A lot of what you’re doing depends on we dress differently than the rest of our guards comyour task that you’re being assigned to. mercially, which is deliberate and has a specific purpose. The presence that our uniform projects does a lot of Working as an EPP, what have been some of the our job for us, but it can also be a double edged sword; highlights for you? whenever we’re around an environment like an airport, You know the stars kind of aligned when G4S came people assume something has gone wrong. So we’re across my plate. My team and I were hired at the incepaware of what we project. Part of that is knowing when tion of the Billy Bishop contract. Prior to that, there was to walk around, knowing when to minimize or maximinothing like it, even to this day, there’s nothing like that ze our presence depending on what the situation calls contract or the people who work on it. The opportufor. Despite the way we look, we do a lot of our work nities that arise around professional development, in without going down the road of force, even if we’re deaaddition to the ability to utilize all of the training you do. ling with situations where we are looking like we’re going What’s really great in my opinion, is being depended on. to have to cross that line - we still do everything we can Yes, it can give people anxiety, or a pressure to perform, to avoid it. So we’re very big on crisis intervention, effecbut the men and women to your left and right are tive communications, and effective de-escalation in every mostly like-minded. That pressure to perform doesn’t way we can before having to get physical. stop them from doing just that - performing. That’s what I like about it; you’re working around the most compeAt Billy Bishop Airport, our day is going to be a lot of tent, switched on, capable people. If you’re having to use enforcement related tasks, patrolling, and sometimes we force, that’s who you want to be out there with - not

just warriors, but intellectual warriors. People who are going to do the job smarter. Who work smarter instead of harder. And that’s what you get in EPPs.

I mentioned that one of the best things about the role of an EPP is being given the power to exercise discretion and having autonomy. Billy Bishop Airport is very big on us exercising our discretion. We knew exactly where to incorporate the them and what lines needed to be crossed for us to defer decisions to them outside of our own.

There was one particular situation I can remember where we had a member of the public who made his way onto the ferry to the island and caused a disturbance. He appeared to be under the influence, and his behaviour was making onlookers, passengers and other tenants of the airport think they had some sort of explosive device on their person. Right away we get the call since we’re the initial responders. Our job isn’t to show up, parachute right into the action and start getting physical. It’s to first assess and get more information since initial reports aren’t the most accurate. We want to get there, have the opportunity to gather intelligence, and then start game planning - how we’re going to intervene, is it within our power to intervene, or do we need to escalate. In this particular case, the client didn’t know what to do in this situation since it hadn’t happened in the airport’s existence. We can’t accurately diagnose people with our eyes, so we opted not to close the distance between us and the individual. Nor did we try to validate whether there were explosives involved or not. After checking out the situation with the client, we got the go ahead to take the ferry out into the middle of Lake Ontario. Nobody was allowed on or off the ferry until a broader response could arrive, since we’re only trained and equipped to do so much. The priority was safety. We isolated the individual so that if the worst were to happen there would be minimal casualties. This turned out to be the right call since nobody got seriously hurt or worse. We were hailed for making the right decision by the Toronto Police, who we make a point of maintaining a good relationship with. As security, we want them to view us and our personnel as

competent, trustworthy and reliable, and that’s exactly the response we got from their assessment of how we handled this situation.

That’s what I like about this stuff. You’re not told exactly what to do in the Elite Protection Division. You don’t have your hand held through situations. You enter gray areas where you have to exercise discretion. And you get lots of opportunities to step outside your comfort zone, which in my experience is ultimately the best way to learn.

Thank you.

------- If you want to share your Journey to G4S or know someone who has an interesting story to tell, please share with us. Send a note to us at Newsletter@ca.g4s.com.