http://smh.com.au/news/national/terror-plan-to-evacuate-city- centre/2005/07/31/1122748524687.html
Terror plan to evacuate city centre By Marian Wilkinson, Tom Allard and Stephen Gibbs August 1, 2005 Police will ask the new premier for extra powers and put forward plans to evacuate Sydney city centre as part of their anti-terrorism strategy. The plans in the event of an attack include procedures for clearing the central business district or instructing people to stay at work until transport and communications have been restored. The counter-terrorism commander of NSW Police, Deputy Commissioner Andrew Scipione, said the evacuation planning required police to imagine the worst that could happen. The incoming premier, Morris Iemma, will be asked to widen police search and seizure powers and increase their counter-terrorism resources. In a separate development, hundreds of Sydney detectives have been ordered to wear uniform or don a fluorescent vest and walk the beat for an hour every day. The directive is a response to last month's London bombings and asks local commanders to use all officers, specifically detectives of all ranks, to patrol busy transport interchanges and other important infrastructure. The directive, from Acting Deputy Commissioner Terry Collins, applies to hundreds of detectives from 46 local area commands. They cover 98 stations, including Sydney Airport, and those policing landmark terrorism targets on the harbour and in the city centre. Mr Scipione said that under the proposals to be put to the new premier, the police would have overarching responsibility for any evacuation. The outgoing Premier, Bob Carr, said the decision to put the police in charge came after the panic caused by a suspected gas leak at Town Hall station last year, which caused the rail network to be shut down. The proposed legislation is likely to call for an expansion of search and seizure powers for police. It is expected to allow random bag searches and might reduce legal curbs on searching the property of suspects. It is expected to propose deploying more police with counter- terrorism training and expertise in monitoring transit systems. There is also a push for more police sniffer dogs. Mr Scipione said he was still working on the proposals and that the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, would have the final say before they were presented to the new premier. He said in the event of an attack or disaster it was important to have clear lines of command, and it had been decided that police, not the Premier's Department or the Fire Brigade, for example, would head that structure. The command - and personnel from the emergency response agencies - would work together in one place. "You can only have one team in command," Mr Scipione said, "You look at London or Madrid, you look at any major event, the community usually look to the police to co-ordinate the disaster recovery arrangements. "The evacuation plan doesn't necessarily mean you need to move thousands of people out," he said. "It may well be that they stay right where they are until we get the transport moving again." The time taken to evacuate Town Hall station after the gas leak raised serious concerns for the Government. RailCorp plans to remove all shops from the station's concourse and its engineers are looking at ways to make it easier for large numbers of people to get into and out of the station. A senior detective at an Inner Metro command said the extra patrols by detectives were an unwanted demand on criminal investigators who were already overworked and constrained by overtime limits. "The bottom line is detectives haven't got the time to do that," he said. Assistant Commissioner Bob Waites, commander of the Inner Metro region, has just returned from London and supports the patrols. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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