No Changes Made in Security for GOP Convention

Officials preparing security plans for the Republican National Convention met with Mayor Susan Golding on Sunday to review those plans in light of the Atlanta bombing, but no changes were made.

Golding had called the emergency closed-door meeting after a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park on Saturday, leaving two people dead and 111 injured.

Police and Secret Service officials reviewed for Golding security measures planned not just for the convention center but for other areas that are expected to be packed with the estimated 50,000 people attracted to the convention, set for Aug. 12-15.

MaryAnne Pintar, the mayor’s press secretary, said after the meeting that Golding is satisfied with the security plans developed in the past year by 18 local, state and federal agencies under the direction of the San Diego Police Department.

“She is confident we have a good security plan,” Pintar said.

Nevertheless, additional meetings are possible as federal law enforcement agencies learn more about the Atlanta bombing and how the lessons culled from that tragedy might be applied to the Republican convention and the Democratic convention set for Chicago, Pintar said.

One point of contention between city officials and Republican convention organizers, even before the Atlanta bombing, concerned the official protest zone designated for a two-acre site across from the convention center.

Republicans had wanted the site farther away. After a federal judge said that would violate the protesters’ right to be heard and seen by delegates, lawyers for the Republicans suggested that metal detectors be used at the protest site, but the judge disagreed.

Pintar said that, as of now, the decision not to use metal detectors at the site, which will be ringed by a metal fence, will not be changed.

“The police chief believes, and the mayor agrees, that using metal detectors would create more of a problem in causing a backup in getting people in and out of the protest site,” Pintar said.

San Diego plans to have its entire 2,000-officer force on 12-hour shifts during the convention, with backup available from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol, among other agencies. The Police Department has leased 200 pieces of high-tech equipment to detect explosives and other weaponry.

Although the official action of the convention will be confined to the gleaming new waterfront convention center, other activities will be spread throughout the city. On the Sunday night before the convention opens, 55 parties are planned for delegations from states and territories.

“You’re going to see a number of officers throughout the city, not just at the convention center,” said Capt. David Bejarano, who heads security planning.

Many details of the security plan probably will not be revealed until after the convention. But Police Chief Jerry Sanders, who was at Sunday’s meeting in Golding’s office, is considering holding a news conference this week to reassure the public that the convention and its surrounding activities will be safe and also to reassure San Diegans that their neighborhoods will not be devoid of police protection.

While deploring the tragedy in Atlanta, officials here also said they hoped that it might make people more cautious about suspicious people or suspicious packages left unattended.

“It’s a tragedy, it’s incomprehensible,” said Joe Perez, agent in charge of the San Diego office of the Secret Service. “Unfortunately, our society is no longer immune [to such violence].”

Pipe bombs are becoming increasingly common in San Diego County. This year, eight have been found unexploded, as many as in all of 1995.

Even as Golding was calling the emergency meeting and the world was transfixed by the damage done by the pipe bomb in Atlanta, the bomb squad of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department was called to defuse a pipe bomb found in a weedy, rural area in the county’s southern reaches.