The New York Times-20080127-The Unthinkable- Right Around the Corner

Return to: The_New_York_Times-20080127

The Unthinkable, Right Around the Corner

Full Text (1009  words)[Author Affiliation] Francine Prose is the author, most recently, of Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them.

THE first time I saw it happen, in 2004, I was walking down 14th Street along Union Square on my way home, wondering what we were going to have for dinner that night. A dozen police cars came squealing around the corner, pulled up to the sidewalk, and parked with their back wheels on the curb.

My heartbeat went from zero to 60 (or whatever the actual cardiac equivalent is) in less than 60 seconds. The attacks of 9/11 hadn't been all that long ago, and I wondered: Had something else happened? Was there a problem in the Union Square subway station? I thought of my husband, my sons. I ran through a mental list of friends and loved ones. Where were they? Were they in danger? Was everyone O.K.?

By now, I know better. What I witnessed was what the police called a critical response vehicle surge.

Maybe a lot of New Yorkers are already familiar with this term, but I had to look it up. That's the phrase for what you see when you're turning the corner onto Broadway, or Fifth Avenue, and suddenly 50 police cars appear, red lights spinning, all of them streaming in rapid (or slow and steady) formation down the avenue. Or they blare their sirens as they speed along Flatbush Avenue, waking up your children, or they rattle the cobblestones on Hudson Street.

I suppose I knew on some level that all this activity signified antiterrorist alertness in our toughened-up post-9/11 world. A drill, a show of force, an effort at deterrence, all rolled into one. An unpredictable but firm presence and a speedy response time constitute Homeland Security 101.

But don't try to set your watch by these demonstrations. That's the entire point. Every day, as many as 76 cars, each from a different precinct in the five boroughs, converge in one place, combat-park with their backs to the sidewalk, receive a terrorism briefing and get assignments to speed off to multiple locations.

The officers have their Hazmat gear. They have been taught how to deal with chemical, biological and radiation attacks, and have been given special training on how to handle disasters in key locations, like the subway. These drills are never at the same hour of the day, never along the same route as the day before. In fact, they're planned to take place where and when we -- and the terrorists -- least expect them.

The city is not going to be caught off guard again, as we were on 9/11. Though the strange thing is that the vehicle surge exactly brings to mind my memory of 9/11: Streams of police cars racing into the city, red lights spinning, as I rode out to airport to catch a flight that was about to be canceled.

Now that I know what the readiness drill is called, and what it's designed to do, I can relax and stop being reminded of the time it happened for real. I can calm down and quit asking what any reasonable human being would wonder when several dozen police cars tear by, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Hey, what's going on? Now that I know, I can spare myself the adrenaline rush.

That last sentence is a total lie. Even if you're pretty sure you know what's going on -- Hey, whatever, it's probably only a critical response vehicle surge! -- some part of you still thinks: Did something happen?

So you watch the police cars speed by. You stand around, you ask someone who asks someone else. Finally, the word goes around. Police drill, or something. Nothing.

Whew. For a few seconds you feel relieved. Then, depending on whether you're an optimist or a realist, you might think: Great! We're safe! or We dodged a bullet this time. Something's going to happen, sooner or later. And that's not a happy moment.

Some people seek out adrenaline: auto racers, sky divers and extreme skiers. Perhaps I'm an oversensitive, overbred urban puppy. But still, if you're not expecting it, a shot of response-vehicle heart-pumping hormones can't be that great for your health. We're Pavlovian creatures. Nature and nurture have conspired to train us to react with fight-or-flight alarm to certain cultural signals: flashing lights and loud noises. First we get the jolt of fear, then the reassurance. Be still my heart; it's only the good guys keeping us safe.

I can't quite remember what the experts ultimately decided about the health hazards of the airborne poisons that residents of Lower Manhattan breathed from September 2001 until that Christmas. So I don't imagine that we will find the time and resources to study how the critical response vehicle surges affect the pulse and blood pressure of ordinary New Yorkers, especially the old and the young.

PERHAPS the best thing that can be said for the training drills is that they're probably more enjoyable than many things the police are called upon to do in the course of a normal day. The police do a great deal for us, they lead stressful lives, and I'm all for combining a show of force aimed at deterring Al Qaeda with a challenging, companionable interval in a hard-working officer's morning or evening.

If we're going to have to live with vehicle surges, I hope they save lives. Actually, I hope the surges are never called upon to save lives. I hope they're never tested.

But as a realist, I worry. I hope these surges won't need to save enough lives to stack up against the minutes by which, for all we know, they're shortening the lives of the otherwise peaceful New Yorkers who happen to be strolling down 14th Street, wondering what to cook for dinner, when, suddenly, out of nowhere, police cars screech up to the curb.

[Illustration]PHOTO: LEDEIN: Five lines (PHOTOGRAPH BY RAMIN TALAIE, 2004; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW YORK TIMES)