ATLANTA — Security measures enacted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still have lasting effects on policing and public life 25 years later.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks, emergency measures temporarily halted routine travel, leading to the complete closure of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport while police surrounded the Capitol and Georgia military bases.
In the years that followed, law enforcement agencies nationwide acquired surplus military equipment and shifted focus toward target hardening and intelligence sharing.
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Thaddeus Johnson, a Georgia State University professor and former Memphis police officer, told Channel 2’s Michael Doudna the post-9/11 response reshaped daily law enforcement operations and information sharing across the country.
“Because we recognize that we were vulnerable at our stadiums, vulnerable at our city halls, vulnerable at colleges, so target hardening became the focus,” Johnson said.
Johnson explained that citizens initially embraced increased monitoring as a necessary trade-off for safety.
“You think about surveillance where citizens were willing to give up a little bit of our privacy to secure our nation as a social contract that we signed,” Johnson said.
The emphasis on security prompted a major surge in local law enforcement spending over the past two decades.
In Atlanta, the police budget grew from roughly $131 million in 2001 to more than $324 million today. Over the same period, Atlanta’s surveillance network expanded to more than 28,000 integrated cameras.
Johnson noted that federal legislation expanded the scope of law enforcement investigations.
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“The Patriot Act really gave more leeway and room to use surveillance for investigations,” Johnson said.
In recent years, public discussions around policing have shifted from terrorism prevention to scrutiny over surveillance technology and accountability, highlighted by the 2020 protests and debates over tools such as Flock cameras.
“Just like most police technologies, the guardrails have not kept up with the actual uses and implementation,” Johnson said.
Gary McConnell also reflected on the broader psychological toll of the post-9/11 security era.
“One of the things that we haven’t got around to dealing with yet is that the side effects of what that does to everybody’s brain,” McConnell said.
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