Copyright 2001
The Detroit News.
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 John T. Greilick / The Detroit News
U.S. Marshal Kevin Pettit looks down on passengers in the security checkpoint at Detroit Metro Airport on Saturday. Travelers there were greeted by a much more visible security presence after flights resumed Thursday and Friday.
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America approves limits to liberties
Security concerns change way of life
By Cameron McWhirter, and Ron French / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- Security experts, government officials and political leaders are delivering a sobering message: America itself is now the battlefield in the war against terrorism. As a result, intense, visible and sometimes intrusive security measures are about to become part of everyday life for everybody.
Those limits to liberties are acceptable to Metro Detroiters and most other Americans. A Detroit News poll Thursday found that 88 percent of Metro Detroiters are willing to "accept restrictions on movements such as metal detectors and military personnel in public places" to increase the nation's security from terrorist attacks.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week similarly found that 71 percent of Americans would back new laws to "make it easier for the FBI and other authorities to investigate" suspected terrorists, even "if that meant giving up some of Americans' personal liberties and privacy."
"You've got to be careful out there now," said Donald Bowen, 50, of Hazel Park. "The U.S. has to accept the fact that they've entered a world where terrorism (at home) is a possibility."
Major changes are likely to include:
* Armed guards everywhere, better trained and better paid. At government facilities, at borders, at major buildings, even in the streets, soldiers, police and security guards will be more visible. Someone with a gun, perhaps federal marshals or the pilots themselves, soon will be on every domestic and international air flight. Soldiers already have been stationed at the Ambassador Bridge and the Windsor Tunnel.
* Longer lines at airports. Curbside luggage check-in has been eliminated. Northwest Airlines officials at Detroit Metro Airport Friday were telling passengers to arrive four hours before their flight so bags could be meticulously searched. Even first-class passengers stood in check-in lines more than an hour.
* Longer traffic tie-ups coming from Canada. Delays since Tuesday have ranged from three to 12 hours for cars and trucks.
* Heightened security at stadiums and concert sites. At Comerica Park, metal detectors were installed Thursday at entrances normally used by employees and the media. There will be no metal detectors at entrances normally used by fans, but fans can no longer bring in coolers and backpacks. Silverdome officials are scrutinizing every box that comes to their office. Other venues, from the Fox Theatre to the Detroit Opera House, are re-examining their security measures.
* Someone may read your e-mail. The U.S. Senate approved a bill Thursday that would make it easier for police to wiretap computers, after word spread that the terrorists may have communicated through e-mails and Internet chat rooms.
* Metal detectors as common as video cameras at major businesses. Since the attack, Aramsco, a Houston security firm, has been flooded with orders for metal detectors and gas masks.
* Disaster training and security in the workplace. Whether people work in factories or office towers, they can expect evacuation training, special security badges, security checks and training on suspicious behavior.
* Close monitoring of mail and package shipping. Loading docks across America that aren't now monitored will be. Packages will be more closely examined at post offices and shipping companies. The routine cursory scan of loading manifests will be replaced with real scrutiny. All of this will slow things down.
* Concrete barriers blocking even more streets around important federal and other government buildings.
* Intense security around utilities and water supplies. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department implemented an emergency plan to increase testing of its system, which provides water to more than 4 million people in 126 communities in southeast Michigan. It hired security guards and contacted local police departments to add patrols of its water lines. The department will spend $5.6 million this year on security alone. Interim Director Kathleen Leavey said the changes are likely to stay in place for the foreseeable future.
"Intense security is going to be part of the fabric of society," said John Rademaker, director of marketing for the Detroit office of Corporate Protective Services, a security concern, and president of the Downtown Detroit Security Executive Council. "It's going to be part of your life and your children's lives. And you will accept, for lack of a better word, this Big Brother approach. Why? Because of this."
Sacrifices for security
This -- the horror of Sept. 11 -- has transformed America's sense of what security should be. As President Bush has declared, America is at war, and the front lines are in our kitchens and our schools, our office buildings and our corner diners, whether you live in downtown Detroit, in a tract home in Livonia or on a farm outside Escanaba.
How far will it go?
"It's unlimited," said John Blount, 73, a retired city worker, as he stood in the the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center under the building's new high-tech camera surveillance system put in last year. "We now all understand changes have to be made for our safety, and we must accept that."
Wherever thousands gather, "there may be metal detectors or face cameras," said Barry Horvitz, director of the weapons of mass destruction department of Aramsco. "You may have to put your eye to a machine to read your iris to gain entry to your office."
Leavey said the Water and Sewerage Department has been contacted in the past by the FBI about threats to the water supply. The department used to conduct annual emergency training with the Coast Guard, local police and others.
"The more you practice something like this, the more it dawns on you that it really can happen," Leavey said. "It's on our conscience all the time."
Not since World War II -- when our grandparents and great-grandparents rationed gas, drove on bald tires, lived with meatless Fridays and walked past armed guards to enter their work sites -- has the American people been called upon to endure such a sea change in how they live.
After previous terrorist scares, Americans have beefed up security measures only to ease them later. Airport restrictions during the Persian Gulf War were later relaxed. Experts think that won't happen now because of the sheer scope of Tuesday's attack. More people died Tuesday than all the American soldiers killed in combat during the War for Independence.
Before Tuesday, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in American history was the Oklahoma City bombing, in which 168 people died. Thirty times that number are reported dead and missing from Tuesday's attack.
"We are in a new world," declared Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Missouri, the House minority leader. He told Reuter last week that "we have to rebalance freedom and security. We can't take away people's civil liberties. But we are not going to have all the openness and freedom we have had."
Even longtime advocates of American freedoms were muted this week by the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The American Civil Liberties Union, the nation's most vocal advocate of uncompromised individual civil rights no matter the cost, urged its state branches, including those in Michigan, not to speak publicly about the coming security measures.
Other advocates of civil liberties discussed the coming changes not in terms of a loss of freedom, but of an increase in security.
Travel disrupted
A week ago, Yale Kamisar, a University of Michigan Constitutional law professor, flew to Seattle with a carry-on bag containing a razor blade, scissors and nail clippers. Today, all those items would be confiscated by airport security.
Kamisar is an outspoken defender of civil liberties, and yet he accepted these new restrictions and invasions of privacy as part of life at the bloody dawn of the 21st century.
"I don't think there is any war between civil liberties and security," Kamisar said. "The poor security (of the past) was not done out of concern for civil liberties. It was done because people were lazy."
For Rex Lux, a truck driver for DaimlerChrysler who was sitting last Friday in a diner near the Ambassador Bridge, the balance among civil liberties, commerce and communal safety are no abstract argument. He spent three hours Friday morning on the Ambassador Bridge waiting in line to go through U.S. Customs. His route used to take 20 minutes. Many truckers work not by the hour but by the mile, meaning delays take money out of their pockets.
"It makes trucking to Canada a nightmare," Lux said. "And you can't even bring a penknife with you because you don't know if they are going to stop you."
Entering Canada Friday still took only "10 minutes; I just blew by," Lux said. "I didn't even open the cab."
On the way back, however, U.S. customs and armed soldiers were examining every car and truck.
Despite the security headaches, Lux's biggest concern was not the inconvenience or even the financial disruption. It was safety.
"My biggest fear waiting up there on the Ambassador Bridge was terrorism," he said. "I'm up there on that bridge and I have nowhere to go. These terrorists aren't done yet. I was really anxious sitting up there."
Travelers returning to airports this weekend for the first time since Tuesday's hijackings faced long lines, European-style baggage checks and a strong police presence. Most travelers seemed resigned to the new inconveniences, calmly waiting hours to check their luggage.
"This doesn't make me happy, but I'll do it if it means I'll be safer," said Kris Belgie of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was trying to find connecting flights from Chicago to Florida.
At Metro Airport, police sniffer dogs trotted through lines of passengers winding from ticket counters to the sidewalk. Disposable razors were being confiscated. Perhaps half of all carry-on bags were being carefully searched.
"They're actually looking at the X-ray machines," said Ann Ellar of Warren, who was trying to make a flight to New Orleans for a wedding. "They're finally doing their job."
Standards raised
For years, companies and governments low-balled security, spending millions on computers and phone systems, but paying $5 an hour for poorly trained and poorly equipped guards who were widely derided as "rent-a-cops."
Rick Lewis, a former Detroit police officer who is CEO of TACT security services in Oak Park, said that kind of complacency had already started to change. Shootings at workplaces, the Oklahoma City bombing and 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Y2K fears and computer viruses made all governments and businesses more aware of security. Sept. 11 made increased security an even greater priority.
What companies and governments have to invest in, Lewis said, is developing a more professional security staff. Security guards, once considered less important than the janitor in most buildings, must be better trained, better paid and better armed.
Rademaker, 48, the Corporate Protective Services manager who is president of the Detroit security council, has worked as a security consultant for decades and has handled clients including MGM Grand, Comerica Park, the Detroit Institute of Arts and other major venues. He said he was confident Americans would accept the coming changes, in part because they already have been accepting incremental changes for years.
Rademaker said that when he started working in the industry in the 1980s, security meant "locking the door and giving the janitor the key." Selling a business one security camera was considered a big success. Today, cameras are everywhere, helping guards to look for suspicious behavior. Rademaker said the technology of the equipment is making major advances.
Rademaker recently sold a day-care center video equipment so that for an extra fee, parents can log onto the Internet and watch the business all day. "If I had suggested that 15 years ago, people would have been appalled," he said. "Today, it's a marketing tool."
Cynthia Vespa, 35, of Harrison Township is ready to accept anything that will make her three children more secure.
"My 5-year-old daughter asked me, 'Are they (terrorists) coming to Graham Elementary next?' " Vespa related. "I said, 'Honey, I hope not, we're going to do everything we can to keep you safe.' "
You can reach Cameron McWhirter at (313) 222-2072 or cmcwhirter@detnews.com.
 David Coates / The Detroit News
U.S. National Guard troops helped out at the U.S. Customs checkpoint at Ambassador Bridge on Friday. Agents are carefully examining vehicles on the border.
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