United States | News & Politics

part 4 \ final

... —is a habit anyone might develop in an age of daily mass shootings. Shaw and Alicea teach it as a matter of professional discipline, but it’s really just paying attention, the kind of awareness that Gavin de Becker has spent a career arguing is hardwired into us—if only we’d stop ignoring it. The class’s answers to Shaw’s scenarios were sometimes on point and sometimes as elaborate as a Home Alone burglar trap. But the underlying lesson was always the same: The person who thinks through the problem and puts in training reps has a head start on everyone else in the room.

The final drill for Icon’s course is a red-carpet event, staged at the theater of a local community college. Alicea passed out armloads of thrift-store cameras from a box of props, and the students who weren’t walking the carpet shouted like paparazzi, requesting poses and booing when protectors lingered in the shot. Shaw demonstrated strategies for working the rope line: staying out of the frame while also being close enough to persuade admirers to back off so his P can keep moving.

The red-carpet event recalled a gentler time, before Rihanna’s and Drake’s homes were attacked, when bodyguards were mostly concerned with superfans fawning too hard. But even under those relatively tame circumstances, the gig still requires carefully heeded instincts and military-grade situational awareness. For most BGs, the biggest hazards are mundane: scuffles with aggressive paparazzi, crazed autograph seekers, and random bystanders trying to create a scene for their own clout. As social media crested, so, too, did incidents of bodyguards attempting to wrestle cameras from photographers, delete pictures, and deliver street justice. Today, the executive-protection industry spends considerable time training recruits not to take the bait. To take control of the situation without becoming the story, in front of dozens of witnesses and cameras. Shaw had a trick for us.

When a fake fan shook the hand of a fake celebrity and latched on with an iron grip, Shaw covered the handshake with one hand. From the outside, it looked like a gesture of plaintive empathy: I’m so sorry, but we must move on. From underneath, the overeager stan could feel one of Shaw’s fingers apply deep, convincing pressure to a single nail bed until they instinctively withdrew their hand. “Keep it YouTube friendly,” Shaw said, smiling. “Never show it on your face.”