Security Begins at Home

Mayor O’Malley addresses The Democratic Leadership Council in NYC
July 30, 2002

This is a greatly important time in our country’s history. Arnold Toynbee’s Theory of the Progress of man says that man progresses in response to adversity. And we certainly have our share of adversity as a nation today.

And in that adversity also comes tremendous opportunities. If we have the guts, if we have the courage, if we have the imagination to live up to our primary responsibilities as public servants, which is to provide for the security of this nation, and the citizens we serve, there are tremendous opportunities for this country in the next century.

Homeland security and crime should not be an either-or proposition, 3,000 of our fellow citizens were killed in this country, many of them right down the street from us.

But over the last ten years in the City of Baltimore, 6,000 of my fellow citizens have been killed.

Not by airplanes, not by bombs, but by the foreign chemical attacks of cocaine and heroin, much of which comes through America’s ports, much of which comes through America’s airports.

True homeland security can and should make this a safer, and more secure nation in each and every one or our neighborhoods. If ever it happens; if ever we create the political will to make it happen.

Sadly, for the last 322 days, since September 11th, I’ve been beginning remarks on homeland security with a throw away introductory sentence that I’m sure all of you have grown weary of: “we need a new paradigm.”

For 322 days I’ve been saying that we need a new paradigm. Today I vow not to say that anymore. We don’t need a new paradigm, what we need is some new action.

Little has changed in the 322 days since September 11th. 322 days that our firefighters and police have been vulnerable for lack of protective equipment, 322 days that our healthcare workers have been vulnerable for lack of proper inoculations, and proper protective equipment, 322 days that our 650,000 local police have been unable to properly access a federal watch list, because there’s 58 of them, and they don’t talk to each other: 322 days of inaction.

We don’t need a new paradigm, we need a new sense of urgency, we need to forge new federal relationships, and most importantly, we need new action. And we needed it 322 days ago.

About three weeks ago I had one of the most encouraging meetings of the last 322 days of inaction, with some leading managers and members of an agency in our national and international intelligence community.

These leaders said that they struggle to share information, to share databases, to make sure intelligence is properly collected, properly analyzed, and properly disseminated. And they close every meeting with these words, words that should give all of you heart, who have been worried by this problem.

“Remember, meanwhile, they’re here, and they’re trying to kill us.”

Not exactly the sort of words we should tell our children at bed time, but for an American Mayor, they were good words to hear from members of the top level of the federal government, because a lot of times you watch the debate and it puts you in mind of that great song from 1776, the musical, where they “piddle, twiddle, and resolve, but not one damn thing is ever solved.”

It was good to know that at least in one of our federal agencies there’s certain urgency in our intelligence community. Remember they’re here, and in the meantime, they’re trying to kill us.

Shortly after September 11th, in fact, the very next day, the only person I could get to give me any good advice and return my call was former Senator Gary Hart, who I really wish were president now, because he had some terrific advice.

He said, “do not wait for the federal government, Mr. Mayor, to do all you can right now to protect the people of your city. The federal government will be years, and years, and years catching up with this new reality, and your people need you now.”

“Surround yourself with the smartest people you have from Johns Hopkins, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and wherever else you can find them, and put together your own plan, and do it now.”

In the City of Baltimore we pride ourselves on not waiting for help from the federal government. In fact, back in the War of 1812, when Congress was scattered all throughout the woods around Washington, D.C., the British government was turned back in Baltimore by a fort that was built by privately funded dollars. So we don’t wait for the federal government and, if we had all of us would still be singing God Save the Queen today.

The challenge is big but not too big to address.

And, from these smart people in and around Baltimore I have been able to learn a few things. And when I was at a Senate Appropriations Committee a member of the Senate said, well, how will know we get there? We have so many millions of acres, and square miles of land in this vast country of ours, how will we know, we can’t protect every inch, how will we know when we’ve gotten to a place where we’re actually doing what we need to do on homeland defense?

So ladies and gentlemen, get out your pens and the next time a U.S. Senator asks you that, I now have the seven points that will tell us we have arrived.

Point Number One: Every metropolitan area should have a local intelligence network, where the local police of all the jurisdictions of our metropolitan areas share information just as we do now around fugitive task forces, just as we do now, around car theft task forces. Every metropolitan area should have an intelligence gathering capacity whereby local law enforcement shares information daily, instantly, routinely, ideally, with the federal government, as well.

Point Number Two: When we arrive at a proper homeland defense, there should be one federal watch list, and not 58 that don’t talk to each other. And the names of suspects should be as easily queried by an officer involved in a car stop as it is by the head of the CIA.

Point Number: Three Every metropolitan area should have a bio-surveillance system by which their hospitals, share with local health departments, in real time, the respiratory symptoms, the symptoms that are encountered by paramedics, by emergency rooms, those sorts of streams of information that can be shared readily, that we put together in Baltimore within three weeks, without a single dime of federal help. Every region should have one.

Point Number: Four Every metropolitan area should have vulnerability assessments done of their infrastructure and likely targets. [Once completed, each area must focus on mitigation efforts of these vulnerable sites. We need to find ways to harden our targets at airports, railroads, water plants, stadia and water systems, for example.]

Point Number: Five Related to point number four, emergency response plans should be graded to the level of alert, given the nature of the threat nationally, and also keyed to the vulnerability plans, a simple concept.

Point Number Six: First responders, firefighters, police, healthcare workers, hospitals should be properly equipped and properly inoculated; and

Point Number Seven: All emergency communications systems should have interoperability, and redundancy.

Those are the seven points. That’s what you can tell the U.S. senators that we need to do. And in the meantime, they’re here, and they’re trying to kill us.

And we can do this, folks, we can absolutely do this. Ron Sims does this every day. Mayor Kilpatrick does this every day. I do this every day. Metropolitan government leaders every day join forces, combine resources, share information across archaic, city-county borders, and we get the job done on a lot of different levels.

We can do this, and we can tell you now exactly what it costs. We can tell you how much it costs in the City of Baltimore to buy dosimeters so we could detect radiation for all of our emergency personnel. We can tell you how much it costs, because we couldn’t wait any more for the federal government to buy them. We can tell you that it’s going to cost $24 million to convert from chlorine to bleach in our treatment facilities in our water and waste water plants.

We can tell you that it cost $3,369,719 for police overtime related to national security and homeland defense over this last year, and we can tell you that it cost $227,239 for our health department to help respond to the anthrax scares that reached the Baltimore area from the Post Office, and also to set up the bio-surveillance network.

What we can’t tell you is when a single dollar will arrive from the federal government to help us with any of this. We can’t tell you that, and neither can anyone in Washington.

Do you think the American people would ever countenance sending the Rangers into Afghanistan without proper equipment?

Then why does our president, 322 days later, have our firefighters and police in all our major population centers sitting there vulnerable, without proper protective equipment?

Do you think that the American people would ever send our soldiers into Operation Anaconda without giving them the ability to communicate with one another, to communicate with their commanders, to communicate with the surveillance satellites? And yet, why is it that so many metropolitan fire departments and police departments are unable to communicate with one another?

Why is it that we have such a difficult time getting one federal dime into upgrading communications apparatus in all of our major metropolitan areas?

Would the American people ever send our troops abroad to win a war, and tell them not to rack up any overtime while they’re doing it?

And yet, 322 days later, the president of the United States is allowing the poorest people in this country to shoulder all of the cost related to police overtime for homeland defense. Could you imagine the American people telling the U.S. Marines that we can’t pay or equip you because a trillion dollar tax cut was just too important to this country’s future?

We have a crisis in our country right now. It’s a crisis of political will. It’s a crisis that’s running from security, running from responsibility, and running from opportunity. And we have also a crisis in our traditional federal, state, and local relationships, ladies and gentlemen, they’re failing us, they’re failing us badly, and there is going to be recrimination from all quarters when the second attack comes and the American people ask, who was trying to do something to prevent this.

Our traditional federal-state-local relationships are failing us miserably in our national security. The federal, state and local relationship is failing us in homeland defense, and we’ve got to change it.

We have a responsibility right now, and it’s probably the most weighty responsibility that we can ever have as public servants, and that is to safeguard the lives of our citizens, to preserve, defend, and protect the future of the United States.

And if we rise to this challenge, and if we rise to this responsibility, as we’ve risen in the past and other times in our history, we will not only meet America’s security needs in the 21st Century, but we can open up tremendous new opportunities, not just for ourselves, but for the world that we share.

Opportunities in health sciences, opportunities in human development, opportunities in transportation, opportunities in new technologies, but that opportunity can only come about if we have the courage to urgently reshape what has become a dysfunctional federal, state and local relationship.

We need to serve the critical needs of this new democracy for there is no return without investment. And there is no victory, especially no victory in war, without sacrifice.

We have a responsibility to reshape that dysfunctional federal, state and local relationship. It’s not serving us well, it’s failing us. And in the meantime, they’re here, and they’re trying to kill us.

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