O.C. Deputies on 'Heightened Alert'

The unprecedented terrorist attacks 10 years ago forced law enforcement agencies to work more closely—a benefit paying off today, according to Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens.

She pointed to Wednesday'sSchool, where an AWOL a Navy corpsman was believed to have planted explosives. Within a few minutes, the entire 3,200-member student body was herded onto the school's football field.

"Ten years ago, we wouldn't have seen that type of organized response,'' Hutchens said. "We probably would have had a bomb squad and the SWAT team out there, but we also had our counter-terrorism units responding and we were getting information from the military.'' The corpsman later surrendered, and no evidence of a bomb was found on campus.

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"Our SWAT teams use Camp Pendleton to do some of their training, so there's a relationship there,'' Hutchens said. "I can tell you, when I started in this business 33 years ago, we didn't talk to each other, and there was not that level of trust with the other agencies. That has changed fundamentally.

"Now it's a given, we work with all these different agencies. It has changed the culture and for the better. We do a much better job when we work together, especially in this day and age of limited resources.''

Counter-terrorism team

"Another example of integrated policing, she said, is the recent creation of a counter-terrorism team among Transit Police Services.

"Sheriff's deputies across the county will be on "heightened alert'' for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, but Hutchens said people should go about their business as normal without fear.

"We are taking a few measures above and beyond the day-to-day, but nothing that I would say that is drastic,'' Hutchens said. "There is no
specific threat, but there's that underlying fear that someone might want to make a big splash on the anniversary. I have friends flying on 9/11, but that's just part of who we are as Americans. We're going to go about our lives and not live in fear.''

Roxane Cohen Silver, a UC Irvine professor of psychology and social behavior who co-authored a study on how 9/11 affected the way Americans travel and view the world, said the attacks conditioned Americans to expect extra security at airports.

"One way that we have changed is we go through airports now and take off our shoes and put our belongings through X-ray machines without protest, because there's an acknowledgment of our vulnerability, which was not the case 10 years ago,'' Silver said.

"People recognize the need and they're willing to put up with some inconvenience as they fly.''

Americans don't mind the increased scrutiny, Silver said.

"We do that because we acknowledge that a large-scale terrorist attack could happen, because it did happen and it could happen again,'' Silver said.

We were sicker then

The study Silver did with Alison Holman, a UCI assistant professor of nursing and a health psychologist, also showed that 9/11 made us temporarily more sickly.

For three years after the attacks, reports of doctor-diagnosed illness jumped 18 percent, the study of about 2,000 adults showed.

Many Americans were uniquely traumatized, because the attacks were on live television, Silver said. In a nationally representative study of several thousand people, 60 percent indicated they saw at least some of the attacks or their aftermath live on television, Silver said.

"They either saw the second plane hit the building or at least one of the buildings fall,'' Silver said. "We saw this tragedy unfold before our very eyes, and I think that's why we saw such widespread effects across the country.''

The study also showed how resilient Americans can be, Silver said.

A few years after 9/11, most Americans who weren't directly affected by the attacks had moved beyond post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, Silver said.

"And we were able to identify some possible benefits after the attack, including feeling closer to friends and family and seeing philanthropy and positive behavior such as increased patriotic activity,'' Silver said.

No studies have been done to support it, but Silver said anecdotal
evidence suggests those most jubilant about the Navy SEALs killing Osama bin Laden were college-aged and younger "who grew up in the shadow of terrorism.''

—Paul Anderson, City News Service