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GREENSBORO — The visit is set. The tickets are gone. The crowds are eager.

And the law is ready.

When Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama comes to Greensboro today, his own Secret Service detail will be supplemented by several local law enforcement agencies.

"With any candidate of this magnitude," Mayor Yvonne Johnson said, "a lot goes into making sure all the security and safety precautions are in place."

Obama will fly in to Piedmont Triad International Airport some time this morning and hold a town hall meeting at 1 p.m. at the Greensboro Coliseum complex’s War Memorial Auditorium.

"Something like this, it’s a huge headache for us, but it’s also a point of pride," Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes said. "We’ve taken on other presidential visits. ... Our job is to assist the Secret Service. They’ve got the ultimate responsibility, and we work well with them. We’re on a first-name basis with those guys."

Barnes said the sheriff’s office will provide 31 deputies for its part of the assignment, which deals mainly with traffic and crowd control.

"I’ll be using folks who are normally off. They’ll be paid overtime, and that gets expensive," Barnes said. "But it’s necessary. We want to make sure nothing bad happens to anybody while they’re in Guilford County. That’s our prime concern. Nobody wants to go down in history the way Dallas did. We take this very, very seriously."

Planning for the visit has also been serious, said Greensboro police Capt. Robert Flynt, who leads the department’s special operations unit.

"We’re very familiar with the venue, so that gives us a head start," Flynt said. "We take the basic information, and then we apply what is new to determine the level of security that’s needed.

"It’s a coordinated effort between us and the Secret Service, and we’ve been in the planning process with them for the last couple of days."

Flynt said part of the Greensboro police’s goal is to make sure it’s business as usual in the rest of the city.

"Anything of this size is an effort that requires manpower," Flynt said. "We don’t want it to impact the normal responsibilities of law enforcement."

Flynt said if all goes according to plan, there shouldn’t be any traffic issues outside the coliseum area.

Flynt said Greensboro police, Guilford deputies and Highway Patrol troopers will supplement Obama’s Secret Service detail.

Obama was placed under Secret Service protection last May, nine months before the first primary votes were cast.

It’s the earliest any presidential candidate has received a Secret Service detail.

In the 2004 campaign, Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards received protection in February of the election year.

Obama’s primary opponent is a former first lady and, as such, Hillary Clinton has had a Secret Service detail continuously since 1992.

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com