What I Saw When I Stopped Being the Client: One Night With a Close Protection Team in Mexico
I've always dealt with the security side of things from behind the scenes. Liaising with the operations managers of our trusted partners, making sure they know what my clients requirements are, making sure schedules are shared so nothing catches anyone off guard. The actual work on the ground has always been someone else's job. My job was to make sure they had what they needed to keep the client happy.
So when my business partner suggested I go out with his team and see it first hand, during the busiest period for after dark close protection in Los Cabos, I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
This isn't generally their main type of work. Their usual clients are executives, business people and affluent families. But Spring Break brought a different kind of demand. A few weeks before the season started, El Mencho, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, had been killed during his capture. The news had people second guessing their preplanned trips. Most of them didn't cancel, they just started taking extra precautions. Parents who would normally wave their kids off without a second thought were now booking them extra security.
The instructions I was given felt like something lifted from a television production.
2200 Meet Casanova in a car park just off the main strip in Downtown Cabo San Lucas for a full briefing on the night's operation. How many groups were out, where each one was, what the rest of the night looked like for all of them.
2215 A driving tour of the strip. Every venue the principals were currently in, every venue they were likely to move to. Get the geography in your head before you're on foot.
2245 Meet Alessa. Walk the strip on foot, venue by venue. See where the principals were positioned, how the CPOs were placed around them, and get briefed on every potential threat between each location. Entry protocols. Exit protocols. All of it.
Standing in that car park at ten o'clock at night honestly felt more like the opening of a Ross Kemp special than a business trip.
After spending a good few hours past my bedtime shadowing Alessa and the team, here are my takeaways:
Comms discipline. Constant, clean, and consistent. Every team member knew where every group was, what their plan was for the rest of the night, and what was happening on the streets between venues. A dozen or so people spread across a few blocks, covering restaurants, bars, the roads outside, all of it connected. Nothing was assumed. If something changed, everyone knew within seconds.
Medical preparedness. Somewhere in the support vehicles sat a tactical medic carrying everything from EpiPens and Narcan to a defibrillator. The full picture of what can go wrong when you put a large group of young people in a foreign country with open bars and warm weather. You hope not to need any of it. The point is that it's there just in case
Female CPOs aren't a diversity consideration. They're an operational necessity.
Alessa moved through groups of young women in a way that didn't register as protection at all. Into the bathrooms, into the spaces where the real risks quietly happen, without drawing attention or creating discomfort. The opposite, actually. The groups felt safer with her there.
Local intelligence and connections are crucial. Alessa knew the strip the way only years of working it can teach you. Walking between venues she would quietly point out the dealers, the known bad actors, who was responsible for what. She knew which venue managers would give her team access that others couldn't get. CPOs waved through while outside firms waited at the door. Principals positioned in quieter, more secure parts of the room. Entry and exit managed so nobody was standing exposed on the street longer than necessary. Without that network, you're not really protecting anyone. You're just present.
At one point Alessa nodded towards a man standing outside one of the venues. Uber driver. No training, no licence, no network. Just someone who had sold himself as security to a group arriving in Cabo for a few hundred pesos. It happens more than people realise. And the problem isn't just that he couldn't do the job. It's that if something went wrong, his presence would make everything worse. No comms, no medic, no extraction plan, no relationship with the venue, the police, or anyone else on the street. Just a man standing outside a bar hoping nothing happens.
The gap between that and what I watched Alessa's team do that night isn't a gap in quality. It's a different thing entirely.
Spring Break is not the most serious operation a team like this will run. Nobody pretends otherwise. But watching the level of preparation that went into it, the comms, the medic, the local relationships, the quiet presence of people like Alessa, it made me think about what that same infrastructure looks like when the stakes actually are high. When the principal isn't a group of students on holiday but an executive, a notable family, or someone whose movement carries real risk.
The detail doesn't change. That's the point.
I doubt the groups out that night gave much thought to how they got home safely. They probably shouldn't have to. But somewhere, there were parents who said goodbye to their children that morning with a knot in their stomach and exhaled when their kids arrived back. That's what good protection actually looks like. Not the moments where something happens. The fact that nothing did.
The platform we are building exists because of exactly what I saw that night. Not to replace teams like this, but to make sure that wherever you are in the world, you are never left choosing between a team like Alessa's and a man standing outside a bar hoping for the best, without knowing the difference.
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