David Beckham and his family are under protection from an armed guard, it has been claimed.The footballer was shadowed by a minder, thought to be an off-duty policeman, as he played with his three sons on Malibu Beach in LA recently, the Daily Star Sunday reports. The guard wore a holstered pistol, without its magazine of bullets."I can't comment on any individual case, but the practice of celebrities hiring off-duty officers for private security purposes is common practice here," a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department said.Photographer Mike Kamara was approached by the armed guard while taking photographs of the family on the beach.He said: "I didn't notice him at first. He kept in the background very discreetly. Within the space of a few frames he spotted me too. I saw him reach into another pocket and pull something out. "It could have been his pistol magazine. It looked the right size and shape but I couldn't tell. As he walked towards me, I saw his hand hovering over his still-holstered pistol, the way cops do when they are on high alert approaching a potentially dangerous situation."He asked who I was and what I was doing. When I told him, he said, 'Mr Beckham would like to spend the rest of the day with just his boys'."A spokesman for David and Victoria said that armed bodyguards were common in America.
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