By Ezra Klein
Marc Ambinder spoke to a bevy of former Secret Service agents and current physical-protection specialists who said that "members [of Congress] can take commonsense steps to reduce the likelihood of an incident, steps that only mildly compromise their access to the public, if at all." But fairly few of the steps mentioned in the article actually seem like good ideas.
One idea is to "request the presence of a police officer from the local jurisdiction" when holding community meetings. That would be from the perspective of constituent access, but is it a good use of resources? Attacks on meetings held by members of Congress happen almost never, while many communities have too much crime and too few police. As Ambinder says, it's not reasonable to ask "the California Highway Patrol to provide officers for every congressional event held by all 54 members of the state’s congressional delegation during a recess." So there is a cost here, but the benefit is unclear.
Another proposal is to have aides "assume some responsibility" over event security to their list of duties. "If the member is sitting at a table, make sure the table is positioned near some sort of concrete pillar that could provide cover. Make sure that the member can quickly move to a vehicle if something happens. A bit of training can help staffers detect unusual behavior in a crowd." And so on.
But will congressional aides make for good bodyguards, even if they get "a bit of training?" I doubt it. Because field organizers actually don't know how to find the one nut who will pull a gun every few decades, they'll start throwing out lots of people who seem a little off. Better than safe than shot at. But if you've ever been to a community meeting, "seems a little off" pretty much describes the whole room. And people who "seem a little off" should have access to their member of Congress, too.
Other ideas in the article include rope lines, a distance of at least seven feet between politician and public ("Safety is nearly assured when the setup keeps the nearest members of the public more than 25 feet away from the protectee”) and proactive threat assessment. In Congress, Rep. Peter King wants to make it a felony to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, which seems fine until you realize that it'salready a felony to shoot at a member of Congress, and so the individuals in question have probably made their peace with a bit of lawbreaking. I could imagine various gun control ideas that might make sense here, but that's not one of them.
And all this would solve ... what? In the past three decades, there haven't been five members of Congress shot by constituents. There haven't been two. There's been one. And it's not at all clear that most of these proposal would've even prevented that shooting.
I don't want to downplay the horror of what happened in Arizona. But attaching a police officer to every congressional event or trying to train aides who're supposed to be listening to constituents to instead try and assess the threat level they pose is not the right way to grieve. We've suffered a tragedy, but there's no evidence, at least as of yet, that legislators are in much everyday danger. That's in stark contrast with, say, people who live in Detroit, who perhaps could use more security.
I don't want to downplay the horror of what happened in Arizona. But attaching a police officer to every congressional event or trying to train aides who're supposed to be listening to constituents to instead try and assess the threat level they pose is not the right way to grieve. We've suffered a tragedy, but there's no evidence, at least as of yet, that legislators are in much everyday danger. That's in stark contrast with, say, people who live in Detroit, who perhaps could use more security.
By Ezra Klein | January 12, 2011; 8:59 AM ET
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