They’ll Say The Cops Did A Great Job; They Always Do

Having had been in a number of “emergency” situations on Capitol Hill during my decade there, I feel safe saying I never felt so unsafe as when the pumped-up, tattooed, shorts-wearing, military assault rifle-toting Capitol Hill cops were trying to keep us safe. Like the time we were told a dangerous criminal with a gun was roaming the halls of Cannon Office Bldg and we were ordered to…wait for it: all leave our safe, locked offices and gather together in the main lobby of the building, fully exposed to the supposed assailant!

Of course we were the kind of office that questioned authority, so we kept our door locked, shut off the lights, and pretended the room was empty when the cops came pounding on the door. It made no sense. It turned out the cops manning the metal detectors were too busy chatting up the cute female staffers to notice that someone had walked through with a “gun” — which, being the day before Halloween, turned out to be a toy, some staffer’s stupid idea of a costume prop.

The evacuation plan in the first few years after 9/11 was practiced with some regularity, keeping us away from our jobs for hours at a time. Whenever the House was out of session, we could look forward to another evacuation drill, where the cops had the chance to yell at us to “KEEP ON THAT SIDE OF THE STREET!!!” as they fingered their assault rifles.

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