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"We don't want to be John Wayne or Bull Conner," Williams says, "but we can't be oblivious to civil society. My concerns are that we will overreact or the protesters will overreact and we could lose control of the situation."

Meanwhile, as the mayor is finishing his speech at Catholic University, law enforcement officials are in the midst of a briefing at the brand-new, high-tech command center in police headquarters, rolled out to deal with this demonstration. Stationed at computer screens in the center of a huge room, local police officers share the technology with federal officers from the FBI, Marshals Service, Secret Service, Park Police, U.S. Capital Police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and National Guard. During the 1968 riots, National Guard troops occupied the city; this time the soldiers will fill in for the local police in neighborhoods, and the local cops will deal with the protest.

Four 5-by-6 screens show computer-aided dispatch grids of the protest area. Local news is running on two huge TV screens at the end of the room -- one is hooked directly into the FBI's command center. Cameras mounted on the World Bank building can beam images of an eight-block area into the command center, and helicopters with satellite links can beam in real-time images. A command bus at ground zero has the same capabilities.

The 30 or so assembled police officers are chatting and joking in this calm before the protests, but the room goes quiet when an older woman in braided gray hair comes on the local news to say she came to Washington to make a statement so that the "world's environment will be safe for her grandchildren."

When the briefing is over, Chief Ramsey predicts that the mayhem of Seattle won't happen here. "We have no intention of using any chemical weapons," he says. "We hope to go through this entire event without having to put on our helmets and riot gear -- unless things escalate."

It's true that the demonstrations will not take place in the midst of neighborhoods where most Washingtonians live, but there is the matter of Georgetown. The elite community that's home to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and the Washington Post's Katharine Graham, among other VIPs, is 10 blocks away -- a perfect staging area or escape hatch for demonstrators.

"Could it spill over?" Ramsey asks. "Yeah. But we don't envision a situation where we'll have to take back neighborhoods."

Mayor Williams doesn't plan to be anywhere near the demonstrations, unless things get out of control. He'll go on national TV, perhaps "Face the Nation" on Sunday and "Good Morning America" on Monday. Other than that, he expects a normal few days.

But, he says, "you can never be totally relaxed about it."
salon.com | April 15, 2000

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