Cops are also in the fight for the long haul. Unlike troops in distant places, they never get a chance to declare victory and walk away. And while the American public and Congress gird for bio-terror and suitcase nukes, U.S. police and security forces haven’t forgotten that the hijackings of Sept. 11 were carried out with box cutters. They know that the difference between life and death in the real world of counter-terrorism may depend more on a lowly flashlight or a folding stepladder than the latest high technology. So the International State Security Show (Milipol), a major exposition of the latest hardware for the forces of order held in Paris this week, showed a cop-on-the-beat’s penchant for tools that are practical, effective, and, by comparison with military hardware, pretty cheap.
Of course there were plenty of gadgets: sirens and flashers, armored cars, even a hovercraft. There were robots to handle suspected bombs or creep around air shafts, and mannequins attired in Robo-Copish body armor. Vendors displayed biometric identification systems that check out your fingerprint, palm, face, retina, iris, voice and signature–“You are the key to everything,” as one company put it. There were plenty of spy-in-the-sky devices; global positioning systems, gas grenades, night-vision goggles, sniper scopes, and enough radical-looking firearms to equip the cast of Star Wars. But one of the biggest attention-getters from Smith & Wesson, best known for its guns, was … a bicycle.
The construction is extra sturdy for riding up and down stairs and over curbs. And the rear gear runs silent, making it easier to roll up behind a perp. “You can use it as a tool, rather than just transportation,” enthused Kirby Beck, a veteran bicycle cop from Minnesota who was brought in for a demo. When questioning a suspect, the officer keeps the bike between himself and the subject. And if there’s a problem, he can clobber him with it. “A weapon!” said Beck, waving the front wheel in the air. But a bike’s most important impact isn’t on skulls, it’s on minds. “Community policing is about knowing the people in your community and working together with them to solve problems,” says Beck. In Florida and New Jersey, in Montreal, Madrid, Paris and Hamburg, terrorists have thrived on the anonymity of modern urban life where no one knows his neighbor, and the cops know even less. The more police are out on the beat, on bikes or on foot, the harder it is for such cells to operate.
And when the terrorists are found? Tim Clemente, an ex-cop from St. Louis, has developed a product that could make all the different to police leading the assault on a hide-out. The neatly acronymed H.A.R.A.S., or Height Adjustable Rescue Assault System, is a collection of platforms and stairways mounted on a truck or van that allows cops to enter a building on three floors simultaneously. “It’s a modern siege engine, in fact,” said Clemente. He got the idea after watching tapes of the disastrous 1993 federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The officers climbed to the roof on ladders, meaning they were looking down as they were going up–and headed right into a fusillade. Clemente’s system would have allowed them to run straight up stairs and into windows at every level of the house. It can also be moved much more quickly, quietly and effectively to the doors of hijacked airplanes on the ground than normal gangways or ladders. And, for that matter, there are few buildings in Afghanistan that would be too tall for it to reach.
Worried about anthrax? The French company Basalte has developed a very simple plastic bag with built-in gloves allowing suspect mail to be opened in a hermetically sealed environment. If there’s powder or any other dubious substance inside, you turn over the whole package, still tightly closed, to the authorities.
Much of the buzz at the show was about the sudden shortage in “bullet-proof” fibers. Even last year, supplies of Kevlar, Dyneema, Spectra and Twarom were running out. They’d been snapped up by a completely different industry, broadband networks that use the threads in fiber-optic cables. Since the attacks on New York and Washington, military and police forces have been re-equipping with new vests and helmets, and airlines are trying to get their hands on the fabric to armor the doors of their cockpits. Adri van der Waals of the Dutch company DSM, which makes Dyneema, says all production is sold out through the end of 2002.
But not every company displaying wares at Milipol is looking at such a bright future. Consider the makers of one of the most famously practical devices in the world: the Swiss Army knife. Before Sept. 11, airlines allowed them in carry-on luggage, and they were must-haves in many a road warrior’s travel kit. “Unfortunately it’s finished,” says Jacques Beligne of Waldmann, a distributor of Victorinox knives. “Even these little ones,” he says, pointing to a version made for paring nails. It’s not the size of the blade that counts, after all, it’s the mind of the person behind it.
