Public Matters

A first-ever multi-agency operation is being conducted in the Port of New Orleans Maritime Security Operations Center, one of the five new maritime security interagency operations centers located on the lower Mississippi River.

The occasion? Super Bowl XLVII, of course.

To be held Feb. 3, the game at the Superdome is expected to draw 150,000 fans to New Orleans, starting now. Meanwhile, Mardi Gras festivities and parades, which pose security challenges on their own, get suspended for Super Bowl week, but will resume on Feb. 6, adding another build-up to security issues.

Response boats, patrol vehicles and personnel started conducting security operations at the Port of New Orleans on Jan. 28, according to news reports.

On terra firma, more than 1,200 New Orleans Police officers will start working 12-hour shifts Wednesday night. Another 370 officers and sheriff's deputies from outside the city and more than 200 Louisiana State Troopers will be part of the detail as well, according to a report from WWL-TV.

"Basically, you're going to see 400-plus police officers every hour of the day in the downtown core, in the French Quarter, on Frenchman Street," NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas told WWL-TV.

Security plans for the days leading up to the game and after have been underway for more than a year, officials said.

"We're going to be using the Mississippi Highway Patrol motorcycle units to move the VIPs, owners, some of the talent around, the teams, because traffic is going to be a challenge on game day and we just want to make sure we get people to where they're supposed to be," Ronnie Jones, spokesman for the Louisiana State Police, said in the report.

There will also be federal agents from the FBI, ATF, DEA and Homeland Security on duty during the big game.

I hope your favorite team wins!

We've all seen the news reports since the Sandy Hook tragedy: Schools hiring armed guards, schools training teachers in concealed weapon carry, schools arming janitors, and so on.

But a school district in California is considering something different. The Pajaro Valley Unified School District is looking into having dogs on patrol.

K9 patrols are trained to sniff out not just drugs and alcohol, but also gunpowder and bullets.

The district has considered the idea before but decided not to go ahead with it, according to a report from KIONrightnow.com. The board is now reconsidering having a K9 patrol visit the schools a few times per year.

"Newtown, the horrible tragedy there, has everyone focused on safety and safety procedures," PVUSD assistant superintendent Murry Schekman told KION.
Board members said in the report that going with a private company is a better option than asking local law enforcement.

"I think that their budgets are stressed, just as other public agencies are stressed, and we're not wanting to lean on them for that," Schekman said.

The school district decided to have staff come back with more information and a recommendation at the next board meeting, the news report said.

It has been five months since an elderly nun and two other senior protesters broke into the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and it seems nothing has been done to fix the perimeter fence that the protesters cut through to get on to the property.

The protesters allegedly cut through three fences and splashed blood on a building used to store bomb-grade uranium before they were arrested. Their trial is scheduled for May.

A photo of the 4.5-foot-high hole in the perimeter fence was published in the Knoxville, Tenn., News Sentinel last month. One of the protesters verified for the newspaper that the hole was his group’s initial entry point. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Steven Wyatt told the newspaper that he could not comment on the hole because he hadn’t seen it or received verification it existed. He said that the perimeter fence is not a high-security area.

Since the July security breach, Y-12, once touted as the “Fort Knox of Uranium,” has been the focus of federal investigations and congressional hearings. The NNSA and contractors have come up a long list of improvements for the facility’s security. In October, Wyatt said concertina wire and other security upgrades were being added to Y-12 fences.

Those of us who do our best to keep up on the latest news in the physical security biz are well aware of Onity’s lock-breach problems, affecting 4 million hotel-room door locks worldwide.

Got a dry erase marker or a Sharpie? Check out instructions readily available online to convert these everyday implements to Onity lock picks, and you'll be into that hotel room like the proverbial Flynn.

The story, and Onity’s response, deemed lackluster by some because the company has agreed to pick up only some of the cost for fixing the locks, has been out there for months. Yesterday, however, it was the subject of a segment on NBC’s mainstream Today Show.

So now your non-security minded neighbors might have a grasp on this, too. Will this have any impact on Onity’s response? Hotel managers’ response?

You can watch the segment here. For anyone who plans on a hotel stay in the coming months, it’s quite powerful.

I don’t travel with valuable jewelry, expensive designer accessories or costly electronic devices, mainly because I don’t own any of those. Regardless, I think I’ll be sticking a chair up under the hotel room’s doorknob on my next trip.