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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.

Traffic engineers worked with city officials to sketch out the map of how the road closings would be set up, in order to best redirect traffic. In the end, some 40 miles of road was slated to be closed each day at about 4 p.m., giving commuters a chance to escape the city while still maximizing security during peak convention time. Ambulances and public buses could use the highways, and the MBTA conducted spot searches of passengers and placed strict limits on the size of packages they could carry.

Sheafe said the planning ensured that the city could stay in operation. "We have to make sure that we're not creating a utopia around the FleetCenter while the rest of the region suffers inordinately," he said. "You don't want to make one place so secure that it totally weakens the rest of the region from a public-safety standpoint."

The Backlash

No matter how artfully the Secret Service behaved behind closed doors, there was no avoiding a public backlash as the convention drew closer. Some of it broke along party lines. But the extensive road closings and the shutdown of North Station had even staunch Democrats, and Boston is a city of staunch Democrats, livid. The mayors of nearby Somerville and Medford threatened to block traffic from being diverted if local roads got too gridlocked. Predictions abounded of urban paralysis and commerce brought to its knees. (Ultimately, while there were occasional backups because of lane closures during the early morning commute, the afternoon rush was far lighter than on a normal summer day, with broadcast traffic reports showing the Central Artery almost eerily empty of cars. Residents, it turned out, had heeded the dire traffic warnings by either going on vacation or working from home.)

Then, there was the question of money. Costs spiraled out of control. The Boston Police Department needed at least 3,000 officers but had a total of only 2,000 on staff. The rest had to come from somewhere and had to be paid for their time. At an event in April, Boston Police Department Superintendent Robert Dunford made a group of security leaders chuckle knowingly when he asked rhetorically, "How is Dunford going to pay for all this? Dunford doesn't know."

Some even blamed the extensive road and train station closings on a lack of police power. New York's Penn Station, after all, wasn't slated to close, even though, like the FleetCenter, it's attached to the convention venue, Madison Square Garden. "The Secret Service is taking a different tactic in Boston because they can't swarm," says Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism adviser for President Clinton, and author of Against All Enemies. "Basically, the tactic they're taking in New York is to swarm, and put so many police into the facility and the area around it that they essentially cover everything with police. They can't do that in Boston."