Terror alerts run risk of crying wolf

But according to published reports, part of the police chief's calculation in not going to 12-hour shifts was around the issue of money: Washington and other jurisdictions around the country can't afford the overtime costs of extended shifts. Last year, the Portland, Ore., police spent $365,000 on overtime protecting the city's bridges, an expense that fiscally strapped cities and states can ill afford.

Different cities have different responses. Justin Risly, spokesman for the Sacramento Police Department, says his department does not change its security procedures during a federal orange alert."The bottom line for us is, unless we have a specific threat, we don't do much of anything differently," says Mr. Risly.

"For cities, everyone's pretty much freelancing on responses, based on the risk assessment in their own community," says John DiStefano, mayor of New Haven, Ct., and president of the National League of Cities.

Even if most citizens have lost track of the alert level, or are unaware of the alerts altogether, Mayor DiStefano says the system still has meaning for first responders.

The day after the nation shifted up to Code Orange, a bomb exploded at Yale University Law School in New Haven. DiStefano says the emergency response was stronger than if the threat level hadn't just been raised.

New York City doesn't struggle with the dilemma of bouncing back and forth between orange and yellow; the city has been at Code Orange since Sept. 11, 2001. But for many residents, that state of high alert has lost meaning.

"I don't really think about it," says Piya Kochhar, a student at Columbia University in Manhattan. "It just seems like this constant state - what are you going to do, freak out all the time?"

That attitude can be found elsewhere across the US, too.

Deidre Smith, of San Francisco, says she "doesn't really think about it" when the threat level rises to orange. "I cross the Golden Gate Bridge daily as part of my commute, but I do it at odd hours and I don't notice a police presence," she said.

But others try to evaluate the alerts case by case. Victor Lieberman, of Carlsbad, postponed a business trip to Paris in the weeks before war broke out with Iraq because of the heightened concerns over terrorism. When the threat level was raised to orange two weeks ago, he continued with his planned business trips. "I don't change business plans," says Mr. Lieberman. "What if I postpone a trip for two weeks and then the threat is worse?"

Some people don't change their lifestyles when the threat level rises. "The whole alert thing is something we Americans tend to get used to," says Kirk Scott, of Vallejo, Calif. "We tend to forget the impetus."

• Stacey Vanek Smith in New York and Pamela Martineau in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report.

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