Foot Surveillance at Blackline - Roles and Behaviours
How our three-person foot surveillance teams work - and what we’ve learned from running exercises in the real world.
You finally see it. The courier you’ve been tracking walks through the front door of a non-descript warehouse. Now you’re sure. This is the place. Your radio crackles with the confirmation. A raid team is on the way.
But getting here took hours of careful movement and coordination between you and a dozen other personnel. Following that courier was no easy feat, and that’s why you and your team spent so much time practicing foot surveillance. At Blackline, your target can be hidden somewhere within a city and foot surveillance is often the only way to find them.
This series of guides to foot surveillance at Blackline covers team structure, your behaviours during a follow, some basic drills, and communications. This article dives into structure and behaviour.
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
Let’s be very honest here. We’re enthusiasts and amateurs, not professional operators. This guide draws on publicly available training materials, blended with the experience we’ve gained from our own exercises and events. We’ll tell you what’s worked for us so far. It’s worth noting that all our events are fictional scenarios and all subjects are consenting role players. Members of the public aren’t part of the game; they’re simply background characters for our event. Safety is paramount, and we use extensive briefings and liaise with police before a mission begins.
STRUCTURE OF A FOOT SURVEILLANCE TEAM
The image of one person conducting foot surveillance alone is popular in films, but the reality is more complicated. Operating alone can mean you’re seen repeatedly, raising your subjects suspicions. It’s also easier to lose track of them while attempting to remain inconspicuous.
For us, teams of three hit the right balance between size and capability. We often deploy additional three-person teams in larger exercises based on the mission requirements. While other structures are possible, this is Blackline’s preferred setup.
The Three Roles
Our three-person teams have three roles. While each person only holds one role at a time, the ownership of each shifts based on the environment and what the subject does.
The Eye
This role is the primary communicator and observer of your foot surveillance target. The Eye provides a running commentary to the rest of the team and any support elements. They balance this with maintaining a discreet distance and appearance so as to not raise alarm. Their messages are brief but frequent, noting the current course and activity of the subject.
The Backup
The Backup supports the Eye by being ready to take over observation when the situation changes. Usually trailing further back and/or on the other side of the street, the Backup is well positioned to turn a corner with the subject. They’re also monitoring their own spacing to ensure they’re not too close to be frequently noticed by the subject.
The Trail
Following further back, the Trail is ready to step into either role when needed. They’re listening closely to communications coming from the eye to determine where they’d be best positioned. Since they’re not directly following the subject, the Trail is also able to monitor the broader situation around the team.
Practical Example
During a work-up event, the subject had managed to separate from the majority of the foot surveillance team. Only one member remained trailing behind the target. Our target said it became pretty obvious after some time that this individual was following them. Why? They kept seeing the same person, whether they were further back on a straight street or making the same turns. This wasn’t a failure on the part of the surveillant, but more illustrates the limitations of being the only observer. With a larger team, the responsibility for observation can be shared and exposures reduced.
KEY FOOT SURVEILLANCE BEHAVIOURS
Having a good team is critical, but how you behave while on the operation matters just as much. Unusual behaviour can quickly attract attention. There are four basic concepts worth practicing.
Cover for Action
This term from the intelligence community means you have an apparent purpose for being somewhere. When your subject looks over their shoulder, you want to look like you’re busy doing something else; you’re just another person going about their business.
Begin by thinking about what people normally do in the area of your operation. If you’re in a commercial area, a shopping bag or a small boxed item lends credibility to your ‘shopping’ activity. Are you in the center of the business district? A laptop bag and a suit jacket or passcard on a lanyard are common with commuting office workers. Food and drink can make other activities feel more legitimate - you’re simply returning from getting something to eat. If you’re looking for additional context, use Google’s Street View to take a look at various locations in the area. You’ll see plenty of people moving about. What do they look like they’re doing? How can you tell? The answers to those questions illustrate exactly what you’ll need to do to create cover for action in that space. A reminder that weekdays vs. weekends and seasonality can adjust normal behaviour in the operational area.
It’s important to distinguish cover for action from clothing and appearance. Your clothing matters when it comes to blending in visually. However, you require a clear purpose for being in a space. A surveillant perfectly dressed to match the surrounding population will still stand out if they’re leaning against a building watching the area around them. A coffee and a cellphone let the subject dismiss you as someone on a break.
Practical Example
During one of our workup events, a person well known to the other participants arrived in the area early with their dog. When they finally came up to the group, people remarked that they had actively ignored our player because they thought it was someone out walking their pet. The dog didn’t make our player invisible, but it made their presence ordinary enough that no one bothered to look at them twice. Adding context to your presence is more valuable than disguising your appearance.
Additionally, in person reconnaisance of the area you're operating in may reveal creative covers for action that you couldn't prepare for. During one team's attempt to observe a brush pass, they found people in camouflage gear hiding in bushes - birdwatchers attempting to observe a rare species!
Spacing and Maintaining Observation
For obvious reasons, walking just a few metres behind your subject for 15 minutes may raise suspicion. However, staying too far back can leave them ‘in the black’ (unobserved) for too long, or losing them altogether.
One of the concepts taught in Surveillance Tradecraft by Peter Jenkins is to try to keep three pedestrians between you and the subject whenever possible. This may not work on a quiet street where the spacing may place you two blocks away. It will also depend on the amount of detail you’re trying to gather with your observation. However, as a strategy in urban environments, it’s a useful technique to keep in mind.
Practical Example
There’s a natural space people keep around themselves while walking. Violating that bubble can expose you as well. During a follow, we had a second three-person team on a side street running parallel to the eye. As they passed an intersection, you could see them. What stood out was the grouping. One team member was following the other two, but their distance was awkward. They were too far away to be with the other two, but not far enough back to be an uninvolved third party. It’s difficult to describe the unspoken rules we use to govern our day-to-day social behaviour, but violating them can instantly draw attention.
Changing the Eye
Earlier, we described a subject spotting a team member because the same person kept appearing behind them. This is one of the key risks for a solo surveillant. But a team can run into the same problem if one person remains the Eye for too long.
In the classic James Bond novel ‘Goldfinger’, one is introduced to a ‘rule of three’ when it comes to encountering the same stranger during an operation. The first encounter is unremarkable. The second encounter is a coincidence. The third encounter is ‘enemy action’. Simply put, seeing the same person in different places at different times is a warning sign.
Changing the Eye should be done frequently. It relieves pressure on team members, and reduces the chances of repeated exposure to the subject. However, there’s a balance to be struck. Swapping roles too often can result in missed observations and can let your subject become familiar with all the team members quickly.
There’s no schedule for changing out the Eye. The task is best done organically when the opportunity arises. For example, when a subject turns a corner or ducks into a shop, the eye can continue forward without stopping. The Backup flows in seamlessly to take over the Eye, and the Trail assumes the Backup role. These activities are part of the various drills that the team becomes proficient in.
Reactions to Being Seen or Compromised
Eventually, your target is going to face you. This may occur at an intersection as they look both ways to cross the street, or when they come out of a cafe. More concerning is when they appear to be more alert to the people around them. Luckily, being seen by the subject isn’t the same as being ‘burned’ (detected). Strangers do look at one another all the time. However, how you react to this interaction will be the difference between being dismissed and being recognized as hostile surveillance.
We have seen it happen almost every time. Our players suddenly come face to face with their subject, even if they’re 20 meters away, and they freeze or duck into cover. It’s a natural response to someone you’re hiding from, but it’s an immediate end to your work trailing this subject. Imagine seeing a stranger suddenly freeze when you spotted them on the street. Few things get your attention faster, and nothing seems more out of place. It’s a reaction worth recognizing and working to eliminate during practice.
A couple of key lessons from our exercises. Firstly, observing someone and staring at them are different things. People notice eye contact, even from a great distance. Instead of locking on to your subject, don’t ‘look’ at them at all. Look past them down the street. Use your peripheral vision as much as possible to keep track of your target, and observe what they’re doing. People can ‘feel’ when someone is watching them, and a quick turn that results in eye contact can be a dead giveaway. Consider how you behave around other strangers on the street. Pay attention to that, and attempt to duplicate those natural behaviours as you practice.
Secondly, avoid a sudden reaction to the subject. When your subject is on the move, so is the eye. Don’t stop when they go into a store, or turn around. Just keep going. Hand off the eye to the rest of your team. That’s why they’re there. Obviously this isn’t a hard and fast rule. You may end up waiting at the same crosswalk or transit stop. But it’s critical that the subject makes no connection between your movements and their own.
Practical Experience
The author is guilty of these sins too. We’re all amateurs after all. During a session in Hamilton Ontario, our team was trying to position ourselves on a parallel street to support the unit with direct observation. As we crossed at an intersection, we noticed the subject round the corner almost 100 meters away. I stutter-stepped and froze. Even at night, we felt it was possible the subject noticed the behaviour and we broke off.
NEXT STEPS
The structure of your team and how you behave are key components to a successful foot surveillance. At our events, these two foundational items have been the source of many learning opportunities. Practice and repetition are what we’ve found to be the best methods in improving spacing, changing the observer, and reactions to being spotted.
In our next post, we’ll begin to dive into some of the basic drills your team will use as you follow your subject through an area. If you’re interested in practicing these skills for an event, check out our event page to see when we’re running our next session!
Leave a comment below to let us know what you want to see in the next post on foot surveillance.
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