Lone-wolf gunmen pose biggest risk to World Cup, says former FBI chief

Lone-wolf gunmen are the “real fear” at the World Cup, according to a former FBI chief assessing the biggest combined security operation in sporting history.

A “mass shooting” near England’s World Cup base camp ‌in Kansas City is indicative of the huge task facing authorities trying to keep fans safe.

Fears over Mexican cartels, previous assassination attempts on Donald Trump and the United States’ relaxed gun laws “significantly up the ante” over the coming weeks, experts claim.

Risk factors across the three nations hosting the tournament vary, but Tim Gallagher, who helped run FBI operations for Barack Obama’s 2008 inauguration, told Telegraph Sport that long-range gunmen present the major concern in most areas.

“I think that the main focus is going to be on a lone gun, and in a terror capacity,” said Gallagher, who now serves as chief security officer at global investigations firm Nardello and Co.

Spanning 16 cities across three different countries, more than 400 local, state and federal agencies make up an unprecedented security operation over the next six weeks.

But one of the biggest security operations of all is in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, a cartel stronghold in Mexico.

Telegraph Sport visited a city police commander who promised to keep fans safe with 15,000 federal, state and local officers on patrol.

Drones and robots will assist with surveillance, military helicopters will swirl overhead and armoured military vehicles will be deployed on almost every other street.

Roberto Lopez, a municipal police commander, said he had “every tool” at his disposal to keep the cartel at bay. “It’s an unimaginable effort that we have done over here,” he says, inviting Telegraph Sport to his force’s headquarters. “We are working with three levels of government, including national defence, the national guard, state police and local police. We’re talking about 15,000 elements working at the same time. We are ready.”

In the United States, Trump’s probable presence at games will also prompt significant challenges. Fans faced major delays getting to their seats at the US Open men’s tennis final and NBA finals because of Trump’s visits.

But the most difficult risk to mitigate over the coming weeks will be random shootings affecting fans away from stadiums. Last weekend, nine people were injured about four miles from where England are set to train at the Swope Soccer Village. England have ‌not yet ⁠arrived in Kansas City and are scheduled to play a friendly against Costa Rica in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday.

Gallagher added: “The real fear is going to be the lone gunman – the lone wolf is the No 1 on the radar of law enforcement both domestically and even in Canada and Mexico. That’s the hardest to stop, really.”

Logan Kennedy, an assistant professor of criminal justice at East Carolina University, told Telegraph Sport that the tournament will be “one of the most complex events to secure, which has direct implications for crowd management”.

In the United States, there will be significant variation in operations from state to state. Kennedy said: “With about 18,000 police agencies in the US, there is significant variation in how they operate and they have the discretion to create their own policies, procedures, and practices independent of one another.”

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