Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1150145
BLISKI WSCHÓD ...A MAHOMET JEST JEGO PROROKIEM. as well as owners and administrators of facilities, utilities, and features of public administration or critical infrastructure are obliged to provide ABW with infor- mation regarding any threats to the fa- cilities and systems – including critical infrastructure – they manage. The head of ABW, in turn, has the right to instruct the said entities on the activities they should undertake to counteract the iden- tified threats and to remove or mitigate their effects. All plans of anti-terrorist protection of facilities and areas subject to obligatory safeguarding are arranged with the ABW as well. The anti-terror- ism law provides also for a possibility to declare four emergency states: from the lowest ALPHA, meaning a threat whose character and scope are difficult to predict, to the highest DELTA, declared when there has been an actual attack or when intelligence services have learned that an attack is at an advanced stage of preparation. If there occurs a terrorism-related event, all relevant services – the police, rescue services, and other – operate managed by one person, an anti-terror- ism coordinator. Usually it's a police of- ficer appointed by the Police Chief or the relevant Provincial Police Commander. In the case of military areas and facilities, it's normally a military policeman appoint- ed to perform this role by the Minister of Defense or the Commanding Officer of the Military Police. This is important in the light of the fact that the operations carried out by the police and rescue ser- vices will need to be closely coordinated in order to ensure the highest level of safety and effectiveness of the activities undertaken. Apart from the fact that individual services manage their activities, the anti-terrorism coordinator is granted some special entitlements. The person may order evacuation from a building or an area, halt the traffic in a given area, and demand that any assistance that may be necessary be provided by legal and natural persons, including taking over the administration of real property and movables. The coordinator is also given approval for the special use of firearms. It's a novelty in the Polish legislation, which clearly defines the principles of using firearms by officers and soldiers engaged in counter-terrorism activities. It is possible then to depart from the standard principles of using firearms, in- cluding calling to act in a specific manner or firing warning shots. It is also permit- ted to use firearms with the intention to take a person's life – like in the case of the German principle of the "ultimate rescue shot" or the British "critical shot". This concerns not only situations where hold people hostage but also to any other situation where the standard principles of using firearms may turn out insufficient – when criminals wear ex- plosive belts, for instance. It's also the only procedure that lets shots be fired by snipers, including at the command of the CT unit commander, meaning actually the entirety of the special forces that will be conducting operations in a given location under the management of the HQ. The existing legal framework defines currently the duties of police special forces as the forces which are expect- ed mainly to react to terrorist threats, especially by neutralizing perpetrators (both direct and indirect), by rescuing hostages, and by neutralizing improvised www.fragoutmag.com