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January 19, 2005
Major Security or Major Headache?
Brian put together a nice summary of the insane levels of security being readied for the inauguration, but last night's massive interagency response took the cake. A man in a van threatened to blow himself up near the White House in what the FBI is calling a domestic disturbance. The entire assembled mights of the US Secret Service, the Park Police, the FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department descended on him and the area around 15th and Pennsylvania. For all I know, even the subway police were involved.
The response to this threat was what I would call "overwhelming", and that's a damn good thing. Tens if not hundreds of cops, three DC mobile command centers, robots, and tactical strike units. The closure of blocks of roads, obviously to protect people in case of an explosion, quickly turned Downtown into a gridlocked tangle of cars. I'd venture to say that within an hour, certainly by 5.00 PM or so, the threat was known to be limited, and MPD should have reopened roads. Maybe it was only known to a TV audience. I'm not going to second guess this, though, except to say that MPD should investigate if everything was done in as expedient a manner as it should have been.
The thing that does get my goat, though, are the lazy assholes that are the officers of the various departments. I'm pretty sure between SWAT, MPD's negotiators, the FBI and a few others, the need for every single cop to be in the area standing around doing nothing is just ridiculous. As I walked by the scene, I saw cop after cop sitting in their cars blocking roads as people gridlocked the streets. Why were these guys not out directing traffic? I, for one, don't buy the "We're Park Police, traffic is not what we do" argument. Traffic could have been kept flowing (albeit slowly) had these other cops, as well as MPD's traffic cops (who seemed to just vanish after a while), got off their lazy asses and got things moving.
Posted by Samer at January 19, 2005 08:33 AM
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