False alarm at the Capitol Saturday. Around 4pm, the state house and its grounds were evacuated over a bomb threat. Staff (the handful of staffers and maintenance personnel who are in the building on an out-of-session weekend) and tourists were ushered out by state troopers. No word yet on whether it was a phoned-in warning or a suspicious package, but either way it was all re-opened to the pubic within a couple of hours.
Yet the manner of the evacuation could raise some serious questions about emergency planning at the Capitol. There’s always a balancing act between safety matters and massing an over-imposing law enforcement presence in a public place: many residents of Washington DC and New York feel that the balance has definitely slipped/been shoved far in the authoritarian direction. However, the handful of troopers on duty were trying to get everyone out of the 22-acre grounds by asking them politely, person by person. To do this, they had to leave the gates unlocked and unguarded. So while they were trying to get people to leave the grounds, others were still blithely walking in to see what the fuss was about.
This article appears in July 27 • 2007.
