+ CAPITOL CRIME-WATCH: Surveillance by humans, cameras and computers has been a 24/7 obsession in D.C. since 9/11.
The cellphones of dead people were still ringing inside the Pulse nightclub on June 12 when Cathy Lanier, chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., got a message from her counterparts in Orlando, Florida. First reports were that a terrorist had carried out “the worst mass murder in American history” there.
A famously hands-on and nocturnal leader, Lanier started punching numbers on her cellphone. One call went to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI-led body that gathers intelligence on threats. Another went to the city’s homeland security ops center. A text message came in from D.C.’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, asking for information. Lanier then set up a conference call with her senior commanders, who were already out in force because of the revelers in town for the city’s annual gay pride weekend. Extra resources were deployed into the nightclub district and venues connected to the day’s march, expected to draw over 250,000 people. As the sun lit up the Washington Monument, D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, a 24/7 nerve ganglion of blinking phones, 911 operators, intelligence analysts, computer monitors with incident reports, and banks of TV screens with camera views of the city’s major avenues and bridges, was pulling in data from all over the region. Metro subway managers, struggling with repairs that shut down some lines, were on alert. Everyone from hospital emergency rooms to the power system and business association had been given notice that something bad was going down 850 miles south and could be coming their way.