40 Agencies Brace for Job of Security at World Cup : Soccer: Worries range from rampaging fans to bomb scares. High-tech command center will direct operations.
In a low-slung warehouse usually reserved for the construction of fanciful floats, a vast collection of law enforcement agencies is laying final plans for Southern California’s most daunting security challenge in a decade.
Starting in nine days, hundreds of thousands of soccer fans--an enthusiastic bunch whose passion for the game has been known to get the best of them--will descend on the region and funnel through the Rose Bowl gates. With them will come dozens of dignitaries, possibly a few heads of state, the promise of millions of dollars for the local economy and a host of vexing questions for the region’s law enforcement agencies. Among the most pressing:
* How to respond if hooligans take to the streets, either to celebrate a victory or lament a loss.
* How to empty the 91,000-seat Rose Bowl if there is a serious bomb scare.
* How to protect the teams and their fans if terrorists strike.
* How to react if kissed by a Dutch fan or approached by a red-wigged Colombian.
Supplying the answers to these and other security questions is a job that has fallen to officials from more than 40 different federal, state and local agencies. They started working together more than 18 months ago, when eight cities across the United States were selected to host the 1994 World Cup games. Since then, they have met across the country, traveled to Europe and Latin America, and trained at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. Lately they have holed up in an inconspicuous, high-tech center near the Rose Bowl outfitted by the U.S. Department of Defense.
There, armed with a bank of television sets and sophisticated communications systems, federal agents and State Department analysts will join state transportation officials, representatives of the district attorney’s office and almost all of the region’s major police agencies, poised for crime, violence and intrigue in any form.
The security forces have drilled extensively, testing scenarios such as the takeover of a public office building, an attack on a foreign dignitary and the storming of the soccer field by furious fans.
As they await opening day, agents and street cops have been getting lessons on the subtleties of soccer mania: They’ve been advised that some Dutch fans like to kiss female police officers, that Swedish fans have been known to deck out in dresses on game days and that certain other soccer loyalists have a disconcerting habit of turning over cars when their teams lose.
They’ve even gotten a briefing about a Colombian soccer star whose fans wear huge red wigs to show their support for him. The lesson for the cops: Don’t panic if a mass of red-wigged fans comes running your way.
“In terms of intensity, the crowds may be more like a rock concert than a Super Bowl,” said Pasadena Police Cmdr. Mary L. Schander, whose department is the lead agency at the Rose Bowl. “The difference, of course, is that this will last a month, not a night.”
After months of drilling and a May 14 practice session, authorities got a chance to test their systems for real on Saturday, when more than 91,000 fans streamed into the Rose Bowl for a sold-out exhibition game between the United States and Mexico. Traffic snarled outside the stadium, but the crowd was well-behaved inside. Police, who seemed omnipresent, reported no serious trouble.
That event had its greatest impact in and around Pasadena. But although Pasadena will host the World Cup games, their impact is expected to stretch across Southern California as tourists arrive by the thousands and bed down in hotels throughout the region.
Because of that, the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are planning to step up their activities around the games, and both agencies have been central planning participants. The Sheriff’s Department, for instance, sent officials to Europe to study crowd control techniques used by law enforcement agencies there, returning with a more acute sense of how frantic international soccer crowds can be.
One lesson among many was that officers on horseback have special advantages when it comes to keeping order at a soccer game.
“Most of the countries we visited used horses,” said sheriff’s Cmdr. Barry King. “It makes it easier for the officers to move the crowd around, and it also gives them a visual platform, turns them into an observation post.”
At the Sheriff’s Department and the LAPD, officers are getting specialized training to prepare them for the games, in briefings as well as videotaped advisories. The first half of the LAPD’s two-part World Cup training tape has been playing at police roll calls around the city for the past month.
“We do not know how a major victory, a close win, a questionable call or a humiliating defeat will be handled by the soccer fans in Los Angeles,” the LAPD training video advises officers, as images of riotous soccer fans from around the world flash across the screen. “We must be ready for anything.”
Among other things, Los Angeles police expect to see a surge in pickpockets and prostitutes, two predictable byproducts of any major sporting event--particularly one that is stretched out over a month. To combat those problems, the department has activated units that specialize in those crimes. The LAPD also has asked reserve officers to volunteer time for the games and expects hundreds to answer the call.
At the other end of the spectrum, its elite counterterrorism force, SWAT, will guard dignitaries who stay in the city or arrive at Los Angeles International Airport and will be on call in the unlikely event of a terrorist attack of any kind.
In addition, law enforcement agents have been quietly working their sources across the country. Internal LAPD memos obtained by The Times note that officers from the Anti-Terrorist Division, which handles intelligence, have met with local consuls general and soccer specialists and have established intelligence links to other agencies.
“The local threat to World Cup ’94 remains low, although there are some concerns should the United States team upset Colombia. . . ,” according to an update on the World Cup planning from Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams to Mayor Richard Riordan. “Those concerns continue to be limited to crowd control at this time.”
Despite that warning for the June 22 contest, law enforcement officials say they are not anticipating any special trouble that day, only making sure that they are braced for crowd reaction.
As the agencies prepare for the onslaught of World Cup soccer, officers and agents say most of the planning has been smooth and has avoided the turf battles that characterized the period leading up to the 1984 Summer Olympics. The FBI and the LAPD in particular clashed publicly over who would play the lead role in that event.
This time, friction has been held in check partly by establishing clear divisions of responsibility: Each police or sheriff’s department is the lead agency for any criminal act committed within its borders.
The FBI, meanwhile, is primarily charged with protecting certain dignitaries, although some of that falls to the U.S. Secret Service, the State Department and special units such as SWAT teams at the various local departments. The California Highway Patrol has dominion on California freeways and is assisting with traffic control at the stadium. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will be on the lookout for major drug crimes. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office will monitor events and provide legal guidance if needed.
All of the participating agencies come together at the Joint Operations Command Center on the Rose Bowl grounds. Final construction work on the center--whose furnishings and hardware will be packed up and used for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta after the World Cup--was completed last week, as crews installed carpets and activated the enormous bank of television sets that will allow center officials to monitor events in every corner of the stadium simultaneously.
There is one low-tech aspect: Should a situation overwhelm any single police force, representatives at the command post would only need to yell across the room. A network of mutual aid agreements spells out procedures for coming to each other’s aid.
“We recognize that a situation such as this one requires us to be talking to each other and sharing information,” Schander said. “This is not a time for us to take little bits of information and hold onto them.”
Despite the division of labor and the mutual aid agreements, there have been a few flare-ups. The LAPD, among others, has feuded with World Cup sponsors about reimbursement for law enforcement expenses--Pasadena is getting between $3.6 million and $4.6 million, but Los Angeles, since it is not a host of the games, will receive just $800,000 for costs incurred in protecting Soccerfest, a weeklong exhibit that is slated for the Convention Center.
More significantly, talk of a job action by Los Angeles police officers has stirred some tensions.
Angered by stalled contract negotiations, some Los Angeles officers have threatened to disrupt security for the games by picketing, calling in sick and refusing to work overtime. Those threats bother some World Cup officials, who worry that an acrimonious labor dispute launched as the games get under way could undermine some aspects of their planning. At the same time, other authorities have quietly fumed that LAPD officers are only peripheral players in the event anyway and are exaggerating their importance in order to exact contract concessions from the city.
The LAPD, which has devoted seven members of its tactical planning unit to full-time World Cup preparation, guarantees that public safety will not be jeopardized even if some officers call in sick or refuse to work voluntary overtime.
“We will have sufficient numbers of officers,” said Lt. Ed Wilson, one of the department’s lead planners for the games. “That you can be sure of.”
On the other hand, a little public relations never hurt either.
Officials are trying to stop trouble before it starts--partly through an unusual video campaign intended to brief fans on what to expect from American cops.
As tourists stream to Los Angeles from around the nation and world, they’ll see the 15-minute tape, entitled “A Safe World Cup Experience,” produced by World Cup soccer officials and members of the National Law Enforcement Executive Council to be shown on airlines. Once they check in at their hotels, they may see it again, as hotels are being asked to play it on their in-house video systems.
The tape, a blend of cheerful narration and stern admonitions, follows a couple as they arrive in Los Angeles, where they are greeted by courteous Immigration and Naturalization agents and then have their luggage politely rifled by a customs official. As they make their way through the city, the narrator gives driving tips--including hints for avoiding carjackers--and warns visitors about American laws such as the legal drinking age and the restrictions on open alcoholic beverages.
As the couple, decked out in World Cup soccer sweat shirts, traipse into the stadium, viewers get a warning about how American authorities will treat such behavior as fighting in the stands, throwing debris at players or referees or running onto the field.
“At no time are spectators allowed on the playing field or pitch,” the narrator states at one point, adding that “swift and certain consequences” will befall anyone who ignores that advice.
On the tape, a few hapless fans try to bring umbrellas, soccer balls or flags on poles into the stadium. Police officers seize them.
The narrator, meanwhile, tips visitors to points of local interest: For example, unlike many of their European counterparts, most American law enforcement authorities carry weapons.
Another difference: Although authorities in some parts of the world tend to give fans room to blow off steam, the style of American law enforcement is to intervene early and prevent violence from gaining momentum.
Police here want fans to be aware of that so that they will not test the resolve of American authorities or overreact if the police move in to break up a fight.
“If you are planning on becoming disruptive, violating any laws, we will take action,” one officer says near the end of the tape, a shot of the Rose Bowl looming over his head. “And by the way, good luck to your favorite team.”
* AIRPORT TURBULENCE: Winds are threatening a huge canvas World Cup mural. B1
