Source: NBC News
When it comes to secure sites, it doesn’t get much tighter than a castle complete with a moat.
“The carriage is several hundred years old, it’s unprotected, it’s not ballistic proof, it’s not bullet-proof, it’s not stab-proof, it’s nothing-proof.”
Yet with more than 100,000 visitors expected to descend on Windsor, the small historic town where the wedding is being held, along with VIPs and 1,200 members of the public who have been invited, those working to keep the wedding safe will need to be ready for a variety of challenges in the castle, on trains and around town.
With that in mind, police started putting security measures into force months before the wedding. Automatic license plate recognition technology has been checking vehicles coming into town. Large steel and concrete barriers have gone up inside and outside Windsor to prevent vehicle attacks. Sniffer dogs routinely search mailboxes, and even the drains have been searched and sealed.
Some 3,000 police officers are expected to flood Windsor, with authorities focusing on four main threats, according to security experts: terrorism, royal obsessives, public protests and crimes of opportunity, like pickpocketing.
“You have a celebration and a royal family that like to be accessible to the public. That has to be matched against security, and they’re not always happy bedfellows,” said former London Metropolitan Police Commander Robert Broadhurst.
That’s certainly the case when it comes to the royal couple’s planned ride in an open-topped Ascot-Landau carriage through Windsor after the ceremony — likely to be the weekend’s biggest security headache.
“The carriage is several hundred years old, it’s unprotected, it’s not ballistic proof, it’s not bullet-proof, it’s not stab-proof, it’s nothing-proof,” said Broadhurst, who coordinated security operations at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and the 2011 wedding of Prince William and the former Kate Middleton (who rode in an open-topped 1902 State Landau carriage from their marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey to the celebration at Buckingham Palace).
“You have a crowd that’s largely unsearched, who could have anything on them, from weapons to paint to graffiti to maggots to confetti, all…
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