Intense Security Keeps DNC Protesters Caged and Streets "Creepy Calm"

Karen Branch-Brioso, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Boston — Whether they're from this host town of the Democratic National
Convention or from places such as Lincoln County, Mo., they all seem to
agree:

"I'd say this is the most intense security I've seen in my life," said Ron
Hartmann, 61, of Eolia, Mo., as he held up an anti-abortion sign outside the
barricaded FleetCenter where Democrats launched their presidential
convention Monday.

Sgt. Bill Fogerty, a Boston police officer for 36 years, concurred. "I've
seen tight security," he said. "I've never seen security like this."With two layers of 10-foot black steel fences erected around its perimeter,
the FleetCenter's security is palpable at every step and visible in the
multiple hues of security force uniforms:

The deep navy blue of the Boston officers who stand in front of the double
rows of steel barricades that surround the center's perimeter.

The starched white shirts of Secret Service officers operating the metal
detectors.

The ominous black jumpsuits of SWAT teams.

And the camouflage of Army sniper teams pacing among the train platforms
draped with razor wire.

Even away from the convention hall, in the rest of downtown Boston and even
in towns 20 miles away, the signs and sounds of security are ever present,
all part of a $50 million effort to avert a terrorist attack at what federal
homeland officials have designated a "national special security event." The
Republican convention next month will get the same treatment.

Tom Sullivan, 37, a carpenter who works on a high-rise overlooking the city,
boarded a commuter train 20 miles from Boston to get to work Monday. He was
startled by the presence at the train station of police with high-powered
M-16 rifles next to new signs that noted every vehicle in the parking lot
was subject to search.

"They were ready to rock 'n' roll," said Sullivan, who also noticed from his
high-rise perch in downtown Boston a change in harbor traffic. "There are
fewer boats, but the ones that are out there are Coast Guard."

Coast Guard helicopters also buzz overhead night and day.

The natives have reacted in one of two ways: They've either left town to
avoid the security hassle — and the 40 miles worth of street closings that
take place each day — or they are drawn to it all like a traveling circus.

Mindy Crowley, 32, of Boston, treated the event as a tourist venue, taking
her visiting sister, Tish Bravo, 23, to the perimeter of the FleetCenter.

"It seems to be there's no traffic around; it's a creepy calm," said
Crowley, who walked past some businesses that shut down for the week,
including one pizza place that posted this sign: "DNC, THANKS FOR NOTHING!!!
GO BUSH."

Crowley and Bravo took the subway downtown and saw transit police decked in
black SWAT uniforms and carrying three weapons apiece, from sidearms to
rifles slung across their backs.

"Kind of scary," Crowley said.

Intermittently, speakers on the subway platforms blare with recorded appeals
from the system director asking riders to report any suspicious activity,
big or small.

"If you see something, say something," drones the appeal.

Those attending the convention themselves carry security passes encoded with
a unique identifier that must be scanned in even before they're allowed to
pass through the metal detectors. Each pass offers access to a different
layer of the convention center, from the hall seats where Bruins and Celtics
fans cheer on more normal days, to the floor of the hall itself. Multiple
staff members, backed up by security officers, are at every entrance.

For a half-hour in midafternoon Monday, even their passes wouldn't allow
them in the doors at all as officers inside found a suspicious package and
held the conventioneers outdoors until the threat had passed.

Back at hotels, guests can't go inside without showing a door key to
security personnel.

Even the protesters appear to be under lockdown in the so-called "protest
pen" erected next to a barricaded parking lot where delegates' buses drop
them off to enter the FleetCenter. But it's a bit hard to make oneself heard
from the 28,000-square-foot zone — fenced off with the double rows of
10-foot steel and circles of razor wire and shrouded overhead with black
mesh. It is through this barricade that protesters must shout their messages
to delegates as they get off their buses.

The security at the zone — upheld grudgingly by a federal judge who
acquiesced to security concerns — has been publicized so much that it is the
tourists who come to see it who actually hear the message. And they
outnumber the protesters by far.

Hartmann, the Missourian, was among a small group of anti-abortion folks who
spent most of the day there, toting signs like his that said, "Real
Christians Don't Kill Babies" and chanting, "He's psycho. He's scary. His
name is John Kerry," to protest the Catholic candidate's pro-abortion rights
platform.

"It's depressing and oppressive," Hartmann said of the protest zone. "The
cage we were assigned to do our protests has no facilities at all. No water.
No bathrooms. Ten-foot fences. Razor wire. It looked worse than a
concentration camp."

But Sullivan, the carpenter, shrugged off the security of the protest zone
as a post-9/11 necessity when he went inside to visit after work.

"It's kind of like a cage, it feels like I'm kind of penned in, but no big
deal," said Sullivan, who didn't even get too upset as an anti-homosexual
group carried out their protest with startling signs that said "God Hates
Fags" and "God Hates America."

"I don't care about the signs," Sullivan said as he pointed at a protester.
"He's got a Yankees hat, on and I want to smack it right off his head."