THREE TIME zones, 3,000 miles and a cultural galaxy apart, New York and Los Angeles -- along with Washington -- face a common threat: They are prime targets of Islamic terrorists.
On the face of it, two of the nation's biggest metropolitan police forces seem to have adopted kindred counter-terrorism strategies. Both have roving SWAT, or "Emergency Service Unit," teams equipped with gas masks and antidotes to chemical and biological agents. Both have set up "fusion" centers to screen threats and monitor secret intelligence and "open-source" information, including radical Islam Internet sites. Both have started programs to identify and protect probable targets. Both have tried to integrate private security experts into their work. Both conduct surveillance that would have been legally questionable before 9/11.
Yet despite such similarities, the terror-fighting approaches of New York and L.A., like the cities themselves, reflect different traditions, styles and, above all, resources. New York, which knows the price of failure and thus has a heightened "threat perception," sets the gold standard for counter-terrorism -- and has the funding ($204 million) and manpower (about 1,000) to do it. Deploying its own informants, undercover terror-busters and a small army of analysts, New York tries to locate and neutralize pockets of militancy even before potentially violent individuals can form radical cells.
By contrast, in L.A., terrorism is a less-pressing concern than gang violence and other crime. Lacking the political incentive, and hence the resources, to wage his own war on terror, Chief William J. Bratton has pooled scarce funds, manpower and information with various government and public safety agencies -- a creative approach that federal officials hold up as a model for financially strapped police departments across the country.
In many ways, Los Angeles and New York might as well be on different planets. The sheer range of territory that Bratton's roughly 9,550-member force and other law enforcement agencies must cover is daunting. "What is New York at its widest -- 40 miles?" asks Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss, a champion of Bratton's campaign for more funds and flexibility for the Los Angeles Police Department, especially its counter-terrorism efforts. "The city of Los Angeles alone is some 450 square miles." The FBI's L.A. field office must protect 18 million residents in seven counties, says its head, J. Stephen Tidwell.
