After deadly Capitol attacks, lawmakers consider what fences should stay or go

The armed man who rammed his car into two police officers outside the U.S. Capitol earlier this month drove in on a road that had been reopened just 12 days earlier, after a months-long shutdown for security.

The razor-wire-lined fence that had drawn a circle around the Capitol, Supreme Court and federal office buildings — cutting off the area from the rest of the city — had shrunk to a smaller perimeter centered around the dome. National Guard troops with long guns, who for two months had paced the fence, had softened their stance. For the first time in months, it seemed, the nation’s capital had begun to relax.

Then, on April 2, a car careened into the two Capitol Police officers, killing William “Billy” Evans, 41, a father of two and an 18-year veteran of the department.

The driver was fatally shot. An emergency alert instructed those at the Capitol to “seek cover” in a nearly two-hour lockdown. Flags were lowered to half-staff. The pain that gripped the District after the Jan. 6 riot felt, suddenly, raw again. Pressure on a bruise.

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The latest attack breathed new life into a debate over how best to secure the nation’s capital — its buildings, monuments and lawmakers — after a year of protest, a bitterly contested election and two deadly attacks at the Capitol in less than three months.

The decisions that legislators and urban planners will make in the coming months about fencing, barriers and security measures could alter the landscape of the District and change the ease with which residents and visitors access public buildings, parks and elected officials.

“One of the most troubling aspects of Congress’s actions in restricting access into and around the Capitol complex is this isn’t just where they work — it’s where D.C. residents live,” said Scott Michelman, legal director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia. “It’s an area where they walk, through which they commute. It’s their neighborhood.”

The issue of a walled-off Capitol has inspired a range of politicians to speak out against a permanent fence — from far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s liberal nonvoting member of Congress.

“Washington does not need to be needlessly fenced in,” Norton said Friday after driving around the Capitol to check on the fence’s gradual removal. “It’s sending a message to the world that we can’t defend our own buildings. So how can we defend anybody else there? There is bipartisan support against the fencing. That’s why I’m sure it’s not going to be here for long.”

A congressional task force convened to study the security of the Capitol grounds has recommended hundreds of new Capitol Police officers and a retractable fence, Norton said, adding that the Capitol can be secured without permanent closures or barricades.

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Before nationwide racial-justice protests after the police killing of George Floyd burst onto D.C. streets May 29, fenced-off areas downtown largely were the result of construction.

In the demonstrations’ early days, police used short, metal barricades and concrete blocks to corral crowds and keep them out of Lafayette Square. Night after night, protesters and police would face off as officers fired rubber bullets, stun-grenades and chemicals into crowds. Demonstrators tore down police barricades to build their own barriers in the street — a separation between them and the advancing police line. Fires broke out, including one in the basement of the historic St. John’s Church that officials later blamed on vandals.

The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks began an extensive expansion of security measures, including bollards, permanent road blocks and fencing.

Fencing

Last summer during the racial-justice protests, fencing was extended to close off Lafayette Square and the Ellipse.

Lafayette Square and the pedestrian portion of Pennsylvania Avenue have been inaccessible for the past 10 months.

The day after peaceful demonstrators were blasted with tear gas on live television to clear a path for President Donald Trump to the steps of St. John’s Episcopal Church — where he held up a Bible — a black, chain-link fence was assembled around Lafayette Square.

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In the weeks that followed, peaceful protests were met by a more relaxed law enforcement presence. The park reopened. On June 22, demonstrators hoisted chains around the statue of President Andrew Jackson in the center of Lafayette Square and tried to pull it down. New barricades then went up over several days — tall, no-scale fencing reinforced by concrete barriers — encircling the square and St. John’s Church across the street.

Throughout the summer and into the fall, fencing expanded and contracted. Fences were erected around embattled monuments like the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park and along the National Mall during the Rev. Al Sharpton’s August march. Later, fencing followed a slew of pro-Trump rallies in the District timed to the November election.

But the Capitol grounds remained largely untouched.

On Jan. 6, when a mob of self-proclaimed militia members, Proud Boys, conspiracy theory adherents and some of Trump’s most loyal supporters began to gather at the base of the Capitol, they were met with a modest police presence and short lines of small aluminum barricades. As rally turned to riot and crowds began to break past police lines and pour into the Capitol, the short barriers were quickly overrun and tossed aside.

Different rallies, starkly different police response

“We don’t have crystal balls, obviously, to anticipate what the next threat might be,” said Marcel Acosta, executive director of the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees planning and development of federal property in the D.C. area. “Just like before 9/11, no one would have thought to plan for a passenger plane being flown into buildings, before Jan. 6, no one would have believed that a mob would have been something we would have to deal with or consider with respect to the Capitol.”

Before this year, Capitol grounds were protected with barriers, typically on the western lawn, and security checkpoints at events such as the Fourth of July or inaugurations.

Fencing

For the Jan. 6 pro-Trump rally, Capitol Police set up a security perimeter, but rioters quickly breached many of the smaller barriers.

After that siege, authorities quickly moved to close off public access to the Mall and much of downtown D.C. in advance of the Jan. 20 inauguration.

For weeks, the unprecedented closures created havoc for people who worked and lived near the zone. The security perimeter was reduced over several weeks to the roughly three-mile-long boundary shown.

By around March 21, the perimeter was reduced to contain just the Capitol grounds.

Twelve days later, a driver slammed into the road barrier at an entry point along Constitution and Delaware avenues, killing one Capitol Police officer.

The security perimeter that followed the riot prompted some public officials to compare Washington to a military base. Layers of fence and checkpoints armed by soldiers in fatigues spanned downtown ahead of President Biden’s inauguration. Pennsylvania Avenue was closed. The Mall sat empty. Access was limited to politicians, prescreened personnel and credentialed media.

At the time, civil rights experts said because the inauguration could provide another high-profile target for domestic extremists, the unprecedented security measures were appropriate — if they remained in place for only as long as was necessary.

The city that Pierre L’Enfant envisioned in 1791 as open and majestic has been forced to adapt to a variety of security threats.

During the lead-up to Inauguration Day, only government officials, National Guard troops and credentialed media could enter this area.

This extended zone permitted vehicle traffic only for residents and businesses.

Extensive no-scale fencing barred pedestrians from much of downtown.

There were also areas with smaller barriers and fencing in place, particularly along Pennsylvania Avenue.

More than two months later, the largest swaths of razor-wire fence have been removed. Access to Constitution and Independence avenues has been restored, and even the no-scale fence around the pastel yellow walls of St. John’s Church has come down.

But other barriers — and countless questions — remain.

The U.S. Secret Service declined to say when the tall black fence that has encircled Lafayette Square since last summer might be removed.

Kirk Savage, a professor of art history and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, said fencing is often a simple and primitive stopgap that allows organizations and governments to sidestep questions at the center of security concerns. In the case of Lafayette Square, he said, the Biden administration will have to address a question the Trump administration did not: What to do with the President Jackson monument?

“The kind of solution that says we’re just going to cut off public access to protect a statue that’s sitting in the middle of it is really drastic, and it creates its own inertia,” Savage said. “Once the fence goes up, you have to then make the decision to take it down. So now, the new administration is in the uncomfortable position of having to decide how to proceed.”

The questions at the core of the debate raging in Washington are not new, Savage said. The urge to shield monuments and other public structures from damage or attack has existed for nearly as long as humans have erected statues and citadels.

Fences and barriers have long been an easy and effective solution. But, he added, the visual cue that large fences send to the public — and other cities in the country — is a message the federal government should reconsider.

Civil rights advocates said the debate over whether the Capitol grounds should be surrounded by a fence distracts from other core issues of safety, including questions over why the police force guarding the Capitol on Jan. 6 was overrun and overwhelmed.

“The security theater of having a big, prominent fence diverts attention away from questions of: How do we actually keep people safe with measures like preparedness and institutional biases that led law enforcement to underestimate the threat posed on January 6 because the potential threat was coming from people who were largely White and perceived to be pro-police?’ ” Michelman said.

He noted the tall fencing that began to pop up around the District over the summer has since become ubiquitous at government buildings across the country.

“When we start talking about excessive security measures, we normalize them,” Michelman said. “It sends a message that we, your government, are afraid of you, the people, and we don’t want you coming too close. That’s a terrible message.”

In D.C., agencies can keep fencing and other physical barriers erected for up to six months without undergoing a full review by the National Capital Planning Commission, spokesman Stephen Staudigl said. Depending on the situation, he added, the commission then can approve temporary fencing to remain in place for up to two years. After that, the agency would require a more permanent solution.

Urban planners with the planning commission have implemented security measures to protect federal buildings, national monuments and public lands following moments of national reckoning, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Several officials and experts pointed to the Washington Monument as an example of security “done right,” noting that the landscaping provides security to the monument and its grounds by diverting pedestrians in circles, creating barriers with steps and reinforced tiers of grass, rather than a fence or barricade.

A similar approach was taken in integrating security features into the architecture and landscaping of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“With those examples, if you didn’t know what you were looking at, it might not even occur to you that you’re seeing very sophisticated security features,” Acosta said. “It blends right into the design.”

Unlike the executive and judicial branches, Congress — and the Capitol grounds — do not fall under the NCPC’s purview, though urban planners with the department said they are regularly consulted by the Architect of the Capitol and work in collaboration with congressional partners, including police.

Capitol Police officials, who oversee the security perimeter, did not respond to a request for comment.

Acosta, who said the NCPC has not begun to discuss the future of various public spaces, said he is waiting for the shock and fear of the latest attacks to fade. That’s typically when those conversations can begin.

“We react to a threat by doing what we think we need to do — putting up fences, for example — and then I think people step back and ask some important questions about how do we promote some kind of balance between security and public access,” Acosta said. “When you’re dealing with these issues, it really is just a matter of time.”

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