Have You Seen the Grey Man?

Well for starters he isn’t that grey and he is easily seen. For those of you who do not know of the grey man/woman let me explain and I’ll do this from three different perspectives:

· The Executive Protection Specialist

· The Sheep

·  The wolf

For the uninitiated the sheep are the unaware people of our society and the wolves are the bad guys out there.

The Protection Specialist
Cool names have been attached to the ‘Grey Man’. Hey, you would think being called the ‘Grey Man’ was a cool enough name, but there are a few more: invisible, covert, unseen, subtle and
nondescript are just a few more. It would sound as if ‘the protector’ has super powers and can disappear at will, move among us without our knowledge, only showing himself when the life of the client/principal is under threat.

Please, this isn’t the movies, I happen to be one of these protection specialists. I work in the real world and I am sorry to burst the Bubble (OK I am not sorry) of those who believe in the Grey Man,
but he is a myth. A myth started by training providers and perpetuated by those who blindly follow what has gone before with their only thought being, ‘hey the myth has been around for so long it must be right, who am I to challenge this
concept’.

The Sheep
Within our society the Grey Man is just as much a myth as in the protection world. These members of the public, just your everyday people living there every day life with one big problem, they do not want to be noticed, they want to be Grey, they want to be invisible. The only thing is they do not know how to go about not being noticed.  

You see them everywhere, head down looking at the ground or head in a book, ear phones on, trying to be small or scurrying about as if the faster they move the less noticeable they will be and the faster they can get from A to B the safer they will be. They don’t or won’t make eye contact, well you can’t if you’re looking down can you? They are like children who think they can’t be seen if they close their eyes. These are the sheep.

The Wolf                                                                                                                                               
The big bad wolf sees everything. At the top of the wolf pack are the terrorists, murderers, kidnapers and rapists while lower down are the muggers, robbers and violent abusers. The upper echelons of the wolf pack see the so called Grey Man of the protection detail trying to not be noticed, how? Because they have studied or taken our training, they know how we operate, where and how we stand, whether we are armed or not, formations, movements and driving skills, they know it all.

The lower echelons of the wolf pack target the weak, timid and nervous, the unaware and the downright dozy. They see you darting about not hearing or seeing anything until it is too late. You
may be grey to other law abiding members of the public but to the wolf you are very much in plain sight and you are their prey.

There is no such thing as grey when it’s your life on the line. This is where everything is either black
or white.

Stay Dangerous

Rock