Milwaukee, WI — The 2024 Republican National Convention starts on Monday, July 15, and will run for four days. On opening day, the Coalition to March on the RNC is set to take the streets near the inner security zone downtown controlled by the Secret Service. The Poor People’s Army (aka Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign) is also slated to march on Monday. Unicorn Riot is planning to cover events live at the beginning of the convention as conditions permit — support our coverage here. This report covers the latest Milwaukee developments and a quick historical rundown of the huge security setups at previous conventions and special events.

The security funding from Congress for each national convention this summer runs to $75 million apiece via federal grants, an increase from the usual $50 million. Importantly, the Mobile Field Force or Field Force Operations package of tactics has been announced as central to policing at the RNC and Chicago’s 2024 Democratic National Convention. The FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness runs a national training curriculum called “Field Force Operations,” and Unicorn Riot released a training guidebook from the center in 2016.

The Wisconsin Emergency Management Agency posted a “Notice of Funding Opportunity” or NOFO (PDF) for “Mobile Field Force” at the RNC. This makes thousands of dollars available to bring mobile field force-trained police units from other cities into Milwaukee for the event.

The Milwaukee NOFO document states, “This funding opportunity is to provide full or partial financial assistance for training and deployment of a FEMA tier three Mobile Field Force team(s) response to the Republican National Convention (RNC)” in Milwaukee.

Critics have long contended that these type of events serve a dual purpose: they enhance the training and experience of important police units from around the country that are often called upon to crush and disperse protest movements, in other words they are a leading edge of “police militarization.” Let’s look more closely at the tactics and systems involved.

Since the huge police crackdown at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the national political conventions have become known for their sprawling security operations and large police actions against protesters, including federal police and special response teams, and sometimes even involving units of the U.S. military beyond the National Guard of the host state. The security incident on Saturday afternoon in Butler, PA, leaving GOP candidate Donald Trump bleeding, showed the scale of security complexities and personnel that surround events like this, including a special response team with rifles on site. (See our report on Homeland Security HSI Special Response Teams.) However, a joint threat assessment for Milwaukee by several law enforcement groups indicated no credible or specific threats.

Around 4,000 police from at least two dozen states are expected in the city according to Milwaukee police, including the California Highway Patrol, Florida Highway Patrol, DC Metropolitan Police, Illinois State Police and Illinois Law Enforcement Mutual Aid System, the Colorado State Patrol, the Massachusetts State Patrol, the Michigan State Police, Hennepin and Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies from Minnesota, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Nebraska State Patrol, New Jersey State Police, North Dakota Highway Patrol, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, and local departments from around the country.

Rarely spotted specialist teams like the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Nuclear Energy Support Team radiation sensor helicopter was sent on a mission to measure the area around downtown Milwaukee. These teams are thought to monitor for “dirty bombs” and other sources of radiation.

In recent days, homeless people say they have been pressured to leave central Milwaukee by authorities, just one example of how the repressive political climate plays out.

The political pageantry inside and protest messages outside certainly matter in U.S. politics. But even before Unicorn Riot started in 2014, some of us tracked how the state handles organized dissent, particularly the “National Special Security Event” model at national conventions and high-profile summits like the 2009 G20 in Pittsburgh and the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago, not to mention the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, where 800 people were mass-arrested in kettles and hundreds more attacked with chemical munitions by police for over four days.

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Milwaukee Model Builds on Years of Large-Scale Police Plans

The 2003 Miami Model documentary covers the rise of this style of policing at the Free Trade Areas of the Americas summit. The New York Police Department used similar tactics, including mass arrests at the 2004 Republican National Convention, which was unlawful and led to an $18 million settlement.

Two professors, David White and Chad Topaz, argued last week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the traditional U.S. protest policing model of “escalated force” that intensified in the 1990s only spurs more protests and dissension. They recommended the alternative of “negotiated management” where police try to develop a plan cooperatively and “maintain a non-aggressive presence, avoiding military gear and confrontational tactics.” (In 2022, the Police Executive Research Forum suggested some alternative practices [pdf], although PERF is more well known for helping mayors shut down Occupy protests around the U.S. in late 2011 [more here].

The 2008 RNC in Minnesota was partially sponsored by the same financial firms like AIG which received massive bailouts during the financial collapse that year. AIG also provided lawsuit liability insurance policy for police misconduct and brutality, which effectively created a lavishly funded insurance shield over government actions that were civilly liable.

The 2008 RNC also included extensive intelligence targeting of the RNC Welcoming Committee protesters for more than a year before the convention started and a long-term sting instigated by FBI informant Brandon Darby against two young men from Texas. (Two documentaries, Informant by Jamie Meltzer and Better This World by Kelly Duane and Katie Galloway, covered this series of events that culminated in federal prosecutions in Minneapolis.)

Back in 2016, we looked at how these events intensify police militarization. In St. Paul, the command center for police and the military was the Multi-Agency Communications Center (MACC) which included personnel from the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) — an element of Pentagon military intelligence. The NGA provides satellite imagery to other government agencies including those flown by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). [The document was originally published by Wikileaks.]

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Emergency Operations Centers Date Back to Cold War & “Continuity of Government”

This MACC structure is similar to “Emergency Operations Centers” (EOCs) developed since the days of 1960s-era riot control documented in the film Riotsville that continued to turn up during the Cold War. “Civil disturbances” were to be managed by applying the “GARDEN PLOT” plan. In 2002, NORTHCOM revised this plan as “CONPLAN 3502” but refused to release it and deemed it classified.

Exercises like nuclear war continuity of government exercise “REX 82 ALPHA” led by FEMA also included similar operations centers.

Marc Ambinder obtained a seating chart for 1979’s “continuity of government” doomsday “REX-79” exercise, which follows a similar model to the MACC, but with only federal agencies involved.

Today, EOCs are standardized by FEMA (PDF) and organized to run under the National Incident Management System [NIMS] and Incident Command System [ICS] (PDF).

Note that the National Special Security Event Joint Information Center (NSSE JIC) is a likely feature in Milwaukee, as at past events; the JIC is a different entity than the MACC or EOC system. This is where the corporate and credentialed media receive press messaging from law enforcement, and oftentimes convey these talking points without critical examination or response from protest groups.

Back in 2016 Unicorn Riot obtained detailed plans about the Cleveland RNC, including more about the role of FEMA and its attached military team units called “Defense Coordinating Element,” and additional research links here. DCOs do not operate under the “Title 10” authority that other federally mobilized military units use, according to materials we found at the time.

The “Dual Status Commander” approach may be used to sidestep certain limitations on how military units are not supposed to be commanded by governors and the president at the same time. For more about these unusual domestic military structures check out the Domestic Operational Law Handbook for Judge Advocates.

Once you look carefully at the structure of National Special Security Events like the Republican National Convention, it’s sobering to realize that such complicated and little-known authorities and systems are in play.

In this reporter’s experience covering National Special Security Events since 2008, local politicians typically are not informed in detail about systems like this. The NSSE policing model is a showcase example of how government actions can crush protests in the future, using sophisticated tools and methods that are rarely seen in the open.

Cover image: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Army Perform Mobile Field Force Training, December 2018, via DvidsHub.

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