[Muffled retro radio broadcast compilation] The BBC is interrupting its normal programs to bring you an important announcement. This is BBC News from London. Buckingham Palace has announced the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. When I actually got the phone call to say that she had passed, I was actually over at Lambeth. And I remember standing still, again such a moment of of mixed responsibility with the event that we were going to have to run. But more importantly, I think I felt the national feeling of sorrow that somebody that had been part of so many people's lives and as a police officer, you swear an oath to The Queen. And I think I really felt at that moment. As much as I'd never met her, I still felt, a real poignant moment when I heard the news. The big hush came over the office and the headlines came up to say that she'd died. And if I'm honest, it was a huge shock. I really... I never thought it was actually happen. I've been planning this for such a long time now, and I, I think I thought that the plans would go on forever and she would go on forever. And I never actually thought that we would be standing here delivering this. But there we were. And I think at that point you set aside your sort of personal feelings about, how I felt about the fact that she died. And you you stand up and you do your job. And that's what we did for the next 13 days. I started my police service in Grampian Police, which is obviously now Police Scotland, but Grampian Police at the time I was serving there in 1996 had responsibility for Balmoral and Royal Deeside. It was a bit ironic for me in that sense, watching footage of the cortege coming down through an area Scotland I love and that I live in, that my family are in. And then deeply and I I'm coming back into London. So it's I mean, it was incredibly emotional. It was definitely challenging. There was definitely moments. It was incredibly tiring. But I wouldn't change it for the world where I was. I'll never forget where I was or what day or what time when DAC Jane Connors rang me and said, I'm going to tell you something, but you can't tell anybody else right now. My name's Lisa Hudson. I work for the Public Order Planning Department for the Met. My role during Operation London Bridge has been to lead the planning team and I've been involved in that for about the last four years. So the scale of the operation is probably the biggest policing operation we've ever delivered. It's the largest number of barriers we've ever used. We used every single one that was available across the whole of the UK. We had officers coming in from across the whole of London to police this. But in addition to that, we used officers from across the whole of the UK and the overseas territories as well. We needed their support to deliver this. As I said, biggest operation we've ever delivered in London. And it really couldn't have it couldn't have happened without their support. And I think it was a really good opportunity to bring the UK together from a policing point of view, using officers from all over the UK to show that this was one big plan that was delivered by us all. So being the Gold Commander, it sounds like a very grand title. And actually what it means is that I'm ultimately responsible for everything that happens under the Operation London Bridge. So I'm in overall charge and I work very closely with Karen Findlay. Who is this the Silver to make sure that the plan is actually delivered as it should be delivered. So I became involved as a Silver Commander back in September 2021, having been asked by DAC Jane Connors, who was Gold [Commander] for Operation London Bridges, to become the Operational Commander for the event. During that period between September, and and very, very recently, obviously we had to really progress the planning. My name is Helen Millichap and I'm a commander in specialist operations in the Met. I have responsibility for royalty, specialist, parliamentary and diplomatic protection. It's a role I've been doing for around 18 months now, and being part of Operation London Bridge is actually one of the proudest moments of my career. The reason you need to plan so far in advance and for so many years for this kind of event is that its magnitude is enormous in terms of all the things that need to come together at a given moment in time. And that's not just all the different ways that policing supports it needs to be in collaboration, obviously, with so many other partner partner organisations. London Bridge is It is the most complex operation certainly that I've ever done, and I was involved in the Olympic planning as well. The death of a monarch is is always going to be a massively significant event in history. And also the monarch sets out very clearly what they want for their funeral. So you have to make sure that you meet that through the royal household. And while the Met is a big force. It's not big enough to be able to manage that over 11 days. And it's not just the officers who stand on the footprint and talk to people, significant number of specialists like our search officers, lots of protection officers because so many dignitaries and members of royal family. I’m sure people saw across the whole of the world people, paying their respects. And obviously all of those leaders flew into London. So a really big protection operation which involved firearms and search. And then you've got the lying in state where people were able to queue and again, people were coming to queue for 14 hours. So all of that takes a number of police officers to be able to keep people safe and make sure that we can maintain the security. The scale of the operation meant that we really needed support from all of our national colleagues to be able to run this event. I think the biggest challenges were knowing that it was going to be unprecedented in terms of the amount of people and the sentiment of the British public on love for for the Queen. We knew how much the queen was loved. We knew how many members of the public would come down into London and want to pay their respects in different areas. Obviously, we've got Buckingham Palace, we've got the houses of parliament, we've got the different ceremonial aspects. So that was one part of it, was knowing just how much the public would want to come out and pay their respects to the Queen. And then obviously we had the movement because she died in Scotland where we had to bring her down through from Northolt and actually into London and Buckingham Palace. And those there's the most iconic moment where the SEG [Special Escort Group], where the hearse goes through the gates of Buckingham Palace and SEG bow their heads in a really iconic moment. So that shows the point at which the ceremonial aspects began in London. I think the thing that's worthy of note when you talk about Operation London Bridges is the fact that you can you can have a plan and you can try as best as you can to plan. But the reality with this operation was it was always going to be no notice. And without the unique complexity, the skill, the whole, bringing together a UK policing. And a lot of that genuinely comes down to the can do approach on the part of everybody that was involved in this operation. The minute there was an activation for Operation London Bridges, we knew who are distinct rules were what our responsibilities were and what was necessary to deliver that. So all of the ways that the cortege was protected and facilitated through traffic, through streets, through different countries to and from where the cortege needed to be, that was pinpointed to the split second to make sure that everything happened at the time that it should. My teams were absolutely critical in terms of delivering Operation London Bridge, and it's something that both parliamentary, diplomatic protection officers and royalty and specialist protection officers have been planning for years. We worked really closely with the local authorities to put in place traffic plans. We've got some dedicated really skilled traffic planners, and we needed to make sure that we we created that safe space for the operation to take place in and for those ceremonial activities to take place. But also making sure that that was secure for members of the public, that they felt safe when they came up to London. And that involved probably one of the biggest traffic plans that we've ever initiated across London. It was incredible, actually, the feedback. I was able to go out and walk around the footprint and talked to many different officers from from Wales to Cheshire to Essex, and they were all really complimentary about the operation, but more importantly that they were part of it. I think that was really important that this was, UK policing at its finest and the officers that had come down to chosen to come down, they wanted to come down because they wanted to pay their respects and they were saying just how fantastic the public were in London, lots of Londoners, but lots of people from outside London talking to them, you know, engaging with them. And there was a real sense of unity. The other aspect was the service was incredibly humbled and wanted to make sure that that protect and serve was very much manifest in how smart our officers looked. And not only looking smart, but thinking smart. And also at the core of everything we did was a huge, big sense of public service and having the opportunity to go out and do what we do really well, which is engaging with the public, talking to the public, you know, walking and being alongside the public on really delivered in our duties in a highly professional manner was prevalent through everything we did across the entire operation. It was absolutely brilliant because what I got to do during the period of time was actually to get out and about a little bit and walk. I did some walking between New Scotland Yard and our headquarters at Lambeth and I walked over Westminster Bridge and spotted so many officers from so many different forces around the country, and all of them were smiling and welcoming and talking to all of the amazing crowds that were on the bridge. And it was just an absolute pleasure to see them join us in London. We couldn't have done this operation without them. Seeing the scale, the size and the length of the military procession and what was going to happen on both of those ceremonial days. To be fair, actually hearing the great big bands with the bagpipes and drums were really, really special because we had managed to see it and there was never any chance of me getting outside to see it on the respective days. Definitely one of the highlights of the week was when King Charles came in and met all the people that had been involved in the team behind the team, because clearly everybody can see what was going on in the public view along the mall and on the various sectors across the footprint. But for King Charles to come in and actually meet the command team, both myself and Gold and some of the other people who have been behind the scenes and were behind the scenes through the entire period, that was that was lovely. And that was really, really special. So on the final day on the final day, we were watching the coffin move from London to Windsor, and we were standing in our control room in silence, really, which is really quite eerie. And the moment that the coffin passed from the Met's area of responsibility into Thames Valley was really quite momentous. There was an enormous cheer that went off in our control room because that really felt that we had delivered Operation London Bridge. I think it's difficult to to point out to a highlight. I think the fact that I was Gold for London Bridge knowing, that we swore an oath to the queen and for me it was a real privilege. But it was also really poignant. And I think the point for me, which as I say, the hearse went through the gates of Buckingham Palace and the crowds, in effect, fell silent. And you can see everybody bowing their heads. And it was dark. There was something really poignant about that moment. And it felt like we'd we'd done part of our duty to The Queen to be able to have that moment and be able to bring us safely into London so we could move on to the next parts of the ceremonial aspects. Initially, afterwards, obviously, there is a little bit of adrenaline involved in delivering something so important over such a long period of time. So there was a bit of time afterwards where it was, okay, what now? But then very quickly, real life takes over again, doesn't set in all of the things that perhaps had been paused or slowed down a bit to allow us to concentrate on this really important operation, have all obviously come back. And so in a way, as the Met, we're busier than ever. It's really bizarre actually, because I haven't had time to reflect on some of it yet. And having been in the special operations room for for 12 days and not going home, but and I think I think it was a job that I've and a huge operation that I thoroughly enjoyed planning for and I actually possibly thought might never happen in my service. If somebody said to me some 26, 26 years old that I would be the silver commander for Operation London Bridges. I would have probably said said they were mad to be honest. But I consider myself incredibly lucky to have worked with a Gold Command that I did with the partners I have, and particularly with the command within the Met that I had the pleasure of delivering the operation with because with their experience, their knowledge and their professionalism, and I couldn't have done it. And for that, I'll be absolutely forever grateful.