As Washington’s political and media types converge on Charlotte, N.C. for the Democratic National Convention, a few have spotted a familiar sight in the blocks surrounding the Time Warner Cable Arena: officers from the Metropolitan Police Department.
Sixty D.C. police officers are in Charlotte this week to help local law enforcement with the immense burden of providing security for a presidential nominating convention. A major party’s conventions is no light affair. With so many elected officials from across the country, much less the president and vice president and their families, at the convention, downtown Charlotte is less a city and more a network of barricades, police kettles, roadblocks and security checkpoints.
Much like the presidential inaugurations D.C. hosts every four years, conventions require the services of the National Guard, FBI, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals, to name a few. Even the Environmental Protection Agency is involved, The Charlotte Observer reports.
More than 50 law-enforcement agencies are covering what Homeland Security has deemed a “National Security Special Event,” based out of a 17,000-square-foot warehouse near Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
And that show of force includes the 60 MPD officers, who are but a small fraction of the 3,400 visiting police officers the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is bringing in this week, MPD spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump tells DCist in an email. The Charlotte police force is 1,760 officers strong, and presumably many of them will still need to patrol the parts of the city where the convention is not taking place.
Of course, the visiting cops might find themselves in unfamiliar territory. Bloomberg News’ Hans Nichols interviewed some of the reinforcement officers from around the country and found that many are having a tough time navigating their way around Charlotte. (The video does not feature any D.C. officers.)
The loaned-out officers aren’t costing D.C. taxpayers anything, Crump says. Charlotte police are picking up the tab.
And it’s two-way exchange. Come January, Charlotte will be one of the many cities that dispatches some of its officers to our streets to create the quadrennial police state known as Inauguration Day.
In the mean time, if you’re reading this in Charlotte and you see any MPD officers hanging out near Time Warner Cable Arena, snap a photo and drop us a line.
A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department spokesperson did not respond to DCist’s requests for comment, but here’s the security plan for the week:
GPA12-12_CharlotteSecurityTransportationPlan
