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In Depth: Democratic Party Convention Security

Boston's big political party in 2004 took a lot of planning. During a six-month period, CSO followed U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Scott Sheafe as he and others developed a security plan tailored to make the best of a bad situation.

From a thick-walled office deep inside the FleetCenter, Steve Denelsbeck can pan a set of color cameras around the entire, 20,000-seat arena and zoom in close enough to read the front of the shirt of a guy in row 6 of balcony section 317. The Secret Service will use these same cameras to watch the crowd as a hometown hero accepts his party's nomination to be president. That means that Denelsbeck, the FleetCenter's security director, has a window into how the Secret Service goes about its planning—something he finds even more interesting than how the Celtics will do on a blustery evening in March.

"Slow" is how he describes it, in a word. "To coordinate with that many people, it's slow. It moves forward, but it moves slow. I don't think that it could move any quicker," he added carefully. "They're very, very thorough."

The number of people involved is mind-boggling enough, never mind the plans themselves. One of Sheafe's first tasks was to set up 17 subcommittees to handle different aspects of the eventairspace, credentialing, intelligence, training and the like. Each subcommittee includes members of the Secret Service, FBI and FEMA, in addition to the appropriate state and local organizations. The transportation and traffic committee, for instance, includes members of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

The end result can be a committee meeting with 80 people representing 40 agencies and at least as many opinions. And the level of planning detail is staggering. The team preparing for potential hostage situations, for example, has to know about the building's construction materialshence the need for FleetCenter staff to be involved even though the arena was officially turned over to the Democrats in June 2004.

"[The Secret Service are] masters at dealing with all kinds of people," Denelsbeck said of the coordination he's witnessed over the past months. "To see the example they set by being so diplomatic, by listening to everyone's needs and trying to understand [those needs] and then prioritize them, never leaving anyone behind, has really been an awesome thing. That's the case with all security business, I suppose. But they just do it so well."

All this is despite law enforcement's reputation for not playing well with others. "From what I remember, seeing [the change from] pre-9/11 to today [is] remarkable," Denelsbeck said. "There are still personalities that will never mesh, but in general these task forces work so well. I'm sure at some level there's still some jockeying going on about who's going to do what, but from what I can tell, it's come an awfully long way."