Pope protection team in place

LAW-ENFORCEMENT officials from the federal, state and local levels yesterday gathered in a nondescript warehouse to explain how they planned to keep Pope Francis safe during his whirlwind visit to the city next weekend.

The Multi-Agency Communications Center - which media members were asked not to identify by address - will be home to officials from more than 50 law-enforcement and government agencies from Thursday to Monday, Sept. 28.

"This is the ultimate team effort," U.S. Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy said during a news briefing yesterday, while noting that Pope Francis' visit has been designated a National Special Security Event.

That designation - typically reserved for presidential inaugurations and national political conventions - puts the Secret Service in charge of security and the FBI in charge of crisis management, Clancy said.

Among those who joined him in the large room filled with land-line telephones, atop rows of long tables and large video screens covering a wall, were Mayor Nutter, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

"Part of the reason for this very facility is information sharing," Johnson said. "It's something we do all the time in connection to events like this, and on an on-going basis. And it's something that, frankly, we are becoming better and better at."

Earlier in the day, Johnson, Clancy, Nutter and Ramsey visited the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul and viewed papal security operations along Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where Pope Francis will preside over a mass for an estimated 1 million people on Sunday, Sept. 27.

To date, Johnson said, no credible threats against the pope have been received.

Although there will be several operation centers around the city where security decisions will be made, the MACC will be the place where "real-time information" is gathered from street cameras and various other sources and fed to the operation centers, said Secret Service Special Agent-in-Charge David Beach, who heads the agency's Philadelphia office.

In addition to the FBI, Homeland Security, the Secret Service and the city's police and fire departments, other agencies involved in the security plan include the Pennsylvania and New Jersey state police, the National Park Service, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the Lower Merion Police Department, the Camden County Police Department, Delaware River Port Authority, the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The federal government will pay a chunk of the security costs, but just how much, the officials would not say. Some of the uncertainty is because Congress has not yet approved a fiscal-year 2016 budget, Johnson noted. The officials also refused to say how many security personnel would be in the city during Pope Francis' visit.

The MACC facility will be in operation 24 hours a day with 90 people per shift gathering and sending out information, Beach said.

Officials pushed back on critics who have said that closing Center City streets to traffic, including I-76 and the Ben Franklin Bridge, was overkill and would discourage some from taking part in the Catholic-church sponsored festivities.

"You have to have structure. If you don't have structure, you have mayhem," said Clancy, who formerly headed his agency's presidential protection division.

"You have to have routes available so that if there is an incident, we can certainly get the Holy Father out of the city, and also we can get the participants and the guests out of the city," he said.

On Twitter: @MensahDean