Bumping into a world leader: U.K. security breach questioned

A member of the public caused a security alert in the north of England when he ran into British Prime Minister David Cameron, reports CBS News Mark Phillips.

Dean Farley, who is a keen runner, was arrested after appearing to collide with Cameron as he left a hall in the northern British city of Leeds.

"I dodged in and out and around, and the next thing I know I have half a dozen suited men haranguing me and manhandling me to the floor," Farley said. "And the whole while I'm asking, 'What's going on? Who are you? What's going on?'"

He was tackled to the floor, detained and then released.

"I didn't see David Cameron," Farley said. "I didn't know it was David Cameron until they let me out of the police van an hour later and told me what I'd actually done."

Cameron was quickly hustled away from the scene and later put the best face on an incident that could have been a lot worse.

"It might be nice to put on the record for once the debt I owe to the close protection team that look after me," Cameron said in Parliament on Monday.

But what if the jogger had been an assassin?

Britain, too, is under threat from militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. And the memory of the attack last week in Ottawa is supposed to have heightened security of Western political leaders.

"Here you had a case of a prime minister leaving a building effectively ahead of his protection team," former British royal family protection officer Ken Wharfe said. "There seemed to be no forward advance to clear the way and then suddenly from the right, and these things happen in a nanosecond almost, we had this man collide with the prime minister."

Farley denied he had spotted Cameron before the collision, but questioned the efficiency of Mr. Cameron's security team if he had managed to get close to him so easily.

London's Metropolitan Police which runs the protection unit has launched an inquiry.