At a secret location, security officials will meet daily -- large video screens in front of them -- sharing surveillance data to be gathered during the Republican National Convention. ¶ Out in the streets, St. Paul police will field 3,500-plus officers -- a third of whom will make up mobile field force units dedicated to crowd control.

A mobile nuclear detection unit is at the ready, officials say, and the U.S. Coast Guard is set to deploy helicopters that can carry "ready assault forces" trained to drop from the sky to take on hostile threats, said Coast Guard spokesman Thomas Blue.

"They can move in quick and take care of business," he said.

As security operations go, Minnesota hasn't seen anything like it before.

The Secret Service, charged with designing and implementing the convention security plan, must be "prepared for the worst," spokesman Darrin Blackford said this week.

Critics, including the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, have accused authorities of exaggerating the possible threats.

In Denver, host of this week's Democratic National Convention, protesters also decried a "police state" after seeing officers in riot gear and atop rooftops.

Asked about the upcoming scene in St. Paul, police spokesman Tom Walsh said: "We're not going to discuss what it looks like. People are going to take away from it what they want to take away from it." But to suggest a police state, he said, "I think that's overstating the case."

The department, awarded a $50 million security grant from the federal government, will have at its disposal $330,000 in helmets, $1 million in chemical masks and $1.9 million in chemical irritants, according to plans approved by the City Council this month.

Will cops be in riot gear? "They have it available," Walsh said. "That's all I'm going to say."