Securing the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta: Part Two

The process of securing the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta conflated multiple types and levels of organizations, ranging from civilian volunteer groups and the Atlanta Police Department to the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard (see Part One, Securing the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_205.html). A certain state of readiness was achieved after six challenging years of organization development.* Opening Ceremonies were scheduled for July 19, 1996. How did the preparedness efforts pan out?

Construction of Olympic Village, Atlanta 1996.
Source: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/moment/v0/041796/olympics.html

On July 4, 1996, two weeks before the Games, a soldier was randomly shot at the gates of the Olympic Village. On July 5, 1996, the U.S. Secret Service banned all non-governmental aircraft from air space near the venues for the Games. The Atlanta Committee for the Organizing Games (ACOG) and the United Parcel Service (UPS) freaked out because locking down the airspace would prevent aerial tours and use of helicopters for package deliveries, respectively. The Federal Aviation Administration developed a compromise by allowing aircraft equipped with special tracking devices (yet uninvented) to fly near Olympic venues.

On July 17, 1996, two days before Opening Ceremonies, TWA flight 800 went down off the coast of Long Island, NY. Many observers, believing that the crash was a terrorist attack, understood the strong possibility that the Olympic Games were the next terrorist target. A dress rehearsal by the Atlanta Police Department and ACOG on the same day did not go well, because of insufficient numbers of volunteers to operate metal detectors, among other reasons. The next day 3,000 young people appeared for jobs that, although promised by a local company, did not exist. One thousand law enforcement officers recruited by ACOG nationwide to work as volunteer security guards at Olympic Village arrived, refused the unacceptable accommodations provided by ACOG, and threatened to depart. The high-tech perimeter fence surrounding the athlete-housing area known as Olympic Village was not installed until hours before Opening Ceremonies. Ninety minutes before these ceremonies, a man dressed as a security guard was found sitting in the Olympic stadium, with a handgun and knife in his possession. The Opening Ceremonies went on without incident.

A recurring issue after the Games began was tension between private ACOG leadership (Billy Payne) and government leadership (Governor Zell Miller via Gary McConnell). ACOG wanted a party atmosphere while government wanted security and safety for the attendees and participants. The divergence of mission often centered on the metal detectors settings. ACOG volunteers kept turning the settings down or even turning the metal detectors off to facilitate the movement of people, according to government officials who eventually prevailed in restoring the settings to levels able to detect assault rifles. In addition, volunteers were not reliable workers. Of 12,000 ACOG volunteers, 2,400 (20 percent) did not show up daily for work. On the morning following the Centennial Park bomb explosion on July 29, 1996, 9,600 volunteers (85 percent) failed to show up to work. Law enforcement and the military filled in the best they could to make the sprawling Olympic Games safe.

AT&T Global Olympic Village, Summer Olympic Games, Atlanta, 1996.
Source: http://www.tribedesign.net/bigatt3.html.

Despite their best efforts, however, on July 29, 1996 at 12:57 a.m., Richard Jewell, a private security guard, discovered a suspicious knapsack in Centennial Park near the base of a sound tower at the AT&T pavilion where a band was playing to thousands of concert-goers. At 12:58 a.m., an Atlanta Police Department 911 operator picked up a call and heard: “There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes.” The dispatcher had no “ Centennial Park” in her computer so used other routes to notify Atlanta Police Department about the call. At 1:11 a.m., police officers were dispatched to Centennial Park. (p. 13) At 1:20 a.m., the bomb exploded, blasting scores of spectators and 11 law enforcement officers moving crowds away from the knapsack. Two people died, one from shrapnel wounds and the other from a heart attack. At 2:30 a.m. the crime scene was secured by the police (70 minutes). Atlanta Police officials believed that the failure to relay the bomb warning might actually have “saved lives because the bomb exploded in 22 minutes, not 30 minutes, a discrepancy that some saw as an attempt to lure law enforcement officers to the scene in order to maximize casualties among them.” (p. 13) Olympic bombing movies are available at: http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/27/sights.sounds/index.movies.html.

The FBI’s fingering of Richard Jewell as the primary suspect in the bombing generated a story with a life of its own. But the story finally has achieved closure as of April 2005 when Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty to the 1996 Olympics bombing.

At the closing ceremonies on August 6, 1996, International Olympics Committee President Juan Antonio Samarach “damned the…Games with faint praise: he congratulated Atlanta for a ‘most exceptional’ Games instead of offering his customary congratulations of hosting the best Games ever.” (p. 14) Security for the Games ended officially when Vice President Al Gore left Atlanta on August 7, 1996.

Editor’s Note : The 1996 Atlanta Olympics experience highlights the difficulty of first aggregating and then integrating a security labor force sufficient in number and training to meet the needs for which it is being formed. In the post 9/11 era, using untrained volunteers “deputized” as public safety officers, who may or may not make it to their post on any given day, just isn’t going to make it for safety-minded citizens interested in attending special events and also living normal-length lives.

One solution to augmenting the public safety labor force is the Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) program, “which educates [citizens] about disaster preparedness for hazards that may impact their area and trains them in basic disaster response skills, such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations. Using the training learned in the classroom and during exercises, CERT members can assist others in their neighborhood or workplace following an event when professional responders are not immediately available to help. CERT members also are encouraged to support emergency response agencies by taking a more active role in emergency preparedness projects in their community.” CERT programs are nationwide with citizens in the State of California leading the way. For more information about CERT, see: http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/CERT/).

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York is also working on creating solutions to the security challenge at public events through its graduate education program in “protection management.” The Protection Management Program offers M.S. degrees for students seeking formal education qualifications in managing fire safety, emergency, and security functions in both the public and private sectors. The program currently has about 90 current students. More information about the program is available at: http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~prt_mgt/. Graduates in the program take foundation courses in emergency, security, and fire safety management, and specialize in one of those areas. In addition, students share three management courses with public administration students. Both programs are in the Department of Public Management, which has been ranked first or second by "U.S. News and World Report" for MPA programs with an emphasis on criminal justice.

Source:

* John Buntin: “Security Preparations for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games (C). 2000, Kennedy School of Government. Available for a nominal fee at: http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/ .