Atlanta Crime Rate Has Olympic Officials Jumping Too

In a five-day period this month security officials for the Olympic Games received two publicized bomb scares, a National Guardsman at the Olympic Village was hit by random gunfire and a stolen car smashed into a tent at a guard checkpoint at an Olympic venue.

And the Games don’t start for another week.

The Centennial Olympic Games will have the largest security force of any peacetime gathering in U.S. history and will feature the most sophisticated electronic gadgetry ever, all at an estimated cost of $300 million.

But, while the bombings of the World Trade Center and the federal building in Oklahoma City have heightened concerns about terrorism, recent incidents at and near local venues point up the need for officials to also guard against the random event, the mundane big-city crime occurrence that could mar the 17-day event.

Officials acknowledge that terrorist threats have been made against the Games, but William M. Rathburn, director of security for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said investigations showed that the threats were not credible. “It’s nothing that has caused us any great concern,” he said Thursday.

But while authorities take steps to protect the city’s water supply and guard highly radioactive material that is stored on the college campus where athletes are housed, Atlanta’s normally high crime rate also is keeping them jumping.

The Olympics will shoehorn an estimated 2 million people into the heart of a city that consistently ranks near the top of FBI crime statistics as one of the most crime-ridden cities in the nation.

Federal and state authorities last month announced the arrests of more than 700 fugitives and felons during a 10-week sweep dubbed Operation Olympus.

The arrests in Atlanta, Macon, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala., were designed to round up “the worst of the worst”--suspected murderers, rapists and armed robbers who might cause problems during the Games.

In addition, Atlanta Police Chief Beverly Harvard said Thursday that police and state investigators made several arrests this week and beefed up staffing in a low-income area of south Atlanta that is host to several Olympic venues.

“We have had some complaints of harassment and minor criminal activity” in the area, Rathburn acknowledged.

The more than 30,000 security officers who will be on duty and highly visible during the Olympics, combined with elaborate electronic security and intelligence gathering, should keep the 2 million visitors to Atlanta safe, officials insist.

“We don’t want the security to be oppressive,” said Rathburn, a former Dallas police chief who was head of Olympic security for the Los Angeles Police Department in 1984, “but we want to clearly indicate that we are prepared for anything that may occur.”

In a press conference Thursday, officials said they were guarding against everything from terrorist acts to pickpockets.

“Anyone who would perpetrate any act of lawlessness against any Olympic participant will be dealt with swiftly and harshly,” said Richard Fox, head of the Atlanta office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Included in the security force are 11,000 mostly unarmed military personnel and 300 National Guardsmen who will carry arms. In addition, surveillance cameras will be used in public spaces and “hand topography readers” and cards bearing microchips will protect access to sensitive areas.

During the Games, 15,000 athletes will live on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology, where, until recently, an undisclosed amount of nuclear fuel was stored for use in the school’s test reactor. Uranium was removed earlier this year because of security concerns.

Bob Lang, director of security at the school, said Thursday that other radioactive material that was not removed has been encased in a protective cask that would protect it in the event of a terrorist attack.

“I feel like the situation has been taken care of,” said Glenn Powell, spokeswoman of Georgians Against Nuclear Energy, a frequent critic. In addition to encasing the 250,000 curies of cobalt-60 in a thick lead and concrete cask, she said the school had erected a fence around the building where it is stored and installed vehicle barriers.

While insisting that the material does not pose a threat, Lang said officials originally had hoped to remove it from campus but decided it would be safer to leave it rather than hurriedly transport it.

Rathburn, in a recent interview, said he expects to get more terrorist threats besides the ones he’s already received.