A former top RUC and PSNI officer has said there is nothing bigger than a US Presidential visit to Northern Ireland, in terms of policing.
Alan Mains served in the two police organisations between 1978 and 2002 and is now a security consultant.
He was speaking ahead of the visit of US President Joe Biden to the island of Ireland next week.
Read more: President Joe Biden: A look back at other US Presidents’ trips to Northern Ireland down the years
"I would have been there when President Clinton visited, a couple of times," Alan said.
"It's probably the biggest dignitary that you could have into Northern Ireland, certainly for us in terms of policing at the time.
"Even now, police will get plenty of advanced notice on it and they would have a good strategy and work very closely together with the American authorities and the teams that look after the President, so it's a very big deal for the police."
President Biden is expected to land in Northern Ireland next Tuesday and will then travel to the Republic of Ireland for three days, before leaving on Friday.
The scale of operation needed for ensuring the security of the President was acknowledged by PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne in Washington last month.
He said at the time that it would be a "huge stretch" and that hundreds of policing colleagues from England and Wales would need to be drafted in.
That was something that Alan Mains acknowledged and said wasn't uncommon for large events.
"The policing support strategy that's open to all UK police forces means they all lend assistance to each other when big events like this happen," Alan said.
"Every detail of the President's visit is rehearsed, looked at and relooked at and it's supposed to be watertight and it will be watertight.
"There's nothing I can think of that's as big as the president coming to Northern Ireland, in policing terms.
"You probably would have had the late Queen, Queen Elizabeth II, who would have been next to the way police would have had to deploy, in terms of the scale of a visit."
The former Detective Superintendent, who was the Senior Investigating Officer in the Criminal Investigations Branch and Crime Advisor for Northern Ireland, said that American security services would be armed.
"It's a big event and it's a very important person and it attracts a lot of people, there's crowds and crowd issues and control," he said.
"A lot of things can go wrong and you really have to prepare for the unexpected.
"There's a common agreement amongst a lot of countries and that is with their own security teams, without getting into too much detail on it.
"Of course they have the wherewithal to defend the President if that's what they need to do.
"I think from the point of view of the security threat as it is now, and I obviously wouldn't be up to date with all that, with the shooting of DCI John Caldwell, you do have to say that there is a threat out there and there has been the recent increase in the terror threat level too.
"Everyone has to pay attention to their own security and the security of someone like the President and you'll always get mavericks out there and it only takes one major incident, especially when you've got a high-profile person over here."
He said it was important that world leaders were able to lend their voice to supporting political progress in Northern Ireland.
"It's a big event for Northern Ireland and hopefully some good news will travel with it, politically it shows good support from America for Northern Ireland politics and that has an indirect impact on police," he said.
"Is there ever a bad time for Presidents to come to Northern Ireland?
"They would have come to Northern Ireland when it was really bad in their day and they've been keen to show their support.
"It's a great thing that the current police officers will go through, it's something that they will remember in their career."
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