SAN DIEGO — Streets shut down. Extra officers called in. Protestors kept at a distance. The 1996 Republican National Convention took place at the San Diego Convention Center, but as we see now with Comic-Con, related events were held all over the city.
That made security challenging and tensions were high because just two weeks earlier, there was the bombing at Olympic Park in Atlanta.
Jerry Sanders was San Diego’s police chief at the time and he knew what was coming, protests and counter-protests. A lot of people with differing opinions.
“We knew it was going to be a tense situation,” Sanders said Monday reflecting on the RNC in town. He says they started their security planning a year before the event even started. “We worked with just about every community group - whether they agreed with us or not. I made sure they had a right to protest peacefully and to have a protest platform.”
The convention went $20 million over budget. Most of that was spent on the added security.
“I don't think you can put in a bid to take on a political convention unless you're willing to spend a lot of money on security because security is the whole name of the game,” Sanders said. He remembers one night in particular when police feared protestors would storm the convention center. Fortunately, that didn't happen.
“Our officers were very calm and we had some pretty energetic demonstrators at night in front of the convention center, but everything was pulled off well. I was really proud of the entire city," he said.
Sanders says they had around a thousand volunteers helping out, plus reinforcements from several federal agencies. Everyone working together to show the nation why we're America's Finest City.
“I'm not sure we made any arrests during the convention,” Sanders recollected. “We were very proud we were able to handle it in such a low-key way that we didn't have to do that.”
It was the first, and only time, San Diego has hosted a political convention. And when it was over... “I just remember the sense of relief when everybody went home,” Sanders said with a smile. “We can get back to our normal lives of trying to fight crime.”
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