Try to drive south on Delaware Avenue today near the Senate office buildings north of the Capitol, and Uncle Sam will shred your tires. Take a ride west on C Street nearby, and you'll be met by police on 24-hour sentry.
The permanent closing of parts of Delaware and C in Northeast Washington is the latest in what many residents and District officials fear is a growing effort by federal officials to claim streets and parking in the name of public safety.
It began with the May 20 closing of Pennsylvania Avenue NW in front of the White House and two other streets near the mansion. No one is sure where it may end now that President Clinton has ordered federal agencies to review the security inside and around their buildings -- in Washington and elsewhere -- as a result of the April 19 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City.
"It's starting to look like a police state," said Douglas Braxton, a carpenter who has lived on Capitol Hill for nine years. "I used to be able to drive my kids in front of the White House. Now I can't drive them past the Senate. What's next? I know everyone's been worried about security, but I still have to be able to drive home every day."
No one doubts that some security measures must be taken to protect not only the president but the public from a bomber. It is a question of striking the proper balance between the need for such protection and a city's obligation to its residents to keep its streets and sidewalks open, particularly a main crosstown artery such as Pennsylvania Avenue.
"We must find a way to accommodate security interests of the federal establishment while at the same time deal with the day-to-day issues of traffic management and full use of our streets and sidewalks," said D.C. Council member Frank Smith Jr. (D-Ward 1). "I would hope we can discourage a growing movement on the part of the federal government to close the city's streets and to barricade the sidewalks adjacent to federal buildings."
The D.C. Council is so worried about the implications of the sudden street closings and elimination of parking near the White House, Capitol and FBI headquarters that members will consider a resolution next week reinforcing the belief that the city, not the federal government, has the ultimate authority to close streets it owns.
Closing a street in the District requires public notice, hearings and review by the mayor, council and Congress. Although the city owns Pennsylvania Avenue, the Treasury Department closed it without involving the District, citing federal statutes that give the Secret Service broad power to protect the president. The streets near the Capitol are controlled by Congress, but other streets near federal buildings are owned by the city.
Last week, Clinton ordered all federal agencies to beef up security in their buildings -- which could mean fewer parking spaces, relocation of day-care centers and long lines at metal detectors. Five federal agencies have asked District officials to prohibit parking around their buildings since the bombing. The city denied the requests, saying it could not afford to lose the revenue from parking or restrict public access. FBI officials ignored the city and banned parking around their building downtown.
A spokesman for the Secret Service, which also wants to restrict parking around its headquarters, said no additional streets are being considered for closing. A White House security review panel that made the initial recommendation to Clinton to close Pennsylvania Avenue has pretty much completed its work.
"There is nothing else under review," the spokesman said.
U.S. Capitol Police would not disclose whether they will close more streets in the future, including the House side of the building.
A month after the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue, Capitol Police announced that beginning today, only authorized vehicles will be allowed on Delaware Avenue between Constitution Avenue and C Street NE and on C Street between Delaware Avenue and First Street NE.
Delaware Avenue adjacent to the Russell Senate Office Building will become one-way northbound for official vehicles. C Street, currently one-way westbound, will change directions behind the Dirksen and Hart Senate office buildings. To enforce the new traffic pattern, Capitol Police said, the area will be monitored 24 hours a day by officers in booths, and devices will be installed in the roadways that will shred tires of vehicles traveling the wrong way.
"We know that we are walking a fine line," said Sgt. Daniel R. Nichols, a Capitol Police spokesman. "People need access to their government. But they also need to be protected. We didn't feel it was unreasonable for a small number of people to be inconvenienced for the greater good."
Whether the streets around the Capitol or the White House could be reopened in the future is open to debate, according to some officials. White House officials said they consider the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue permanent; the Interior Department is developing a plan to turn the area in front of the White House into a pedestrian mall.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said she believes the ban on vehicular traffic along Pennsylvania and other streets could be lifted if technology is developed that could detect a vehicle carrying explosives miles away from the White House.
"I do not accept the notion that historic Pennsylvania Avenue must be closed forever," she said at a hearing last week on Capitol Hill to determine the effect of shutting down the two-block stretch.
The effects have been far-reaching. As Greg Fazakerley, president of the D.C. Building Industry Association, said at the hearing: "Commuting times have gotten longer, parking more difficult. For retailers, pedestrian traffic patterns have been disrupted, sales are off and office tenants looking to relocate are now unsure about where to go."
Road closures are nothing new in Washington. In 1983, several streets around the Capitol were shut down after a powerful bomb exploded just outside the Senate chamber.
Nichols, the Capitol Police spokesman, said: "What a lot of people don't understand is that shutting down roads not only protects senators and representatives, but the thousands of citizens who visit them every year. The inconvenience of taking another street is nothing compared with what happened in Oklahoma.
"There's a saying we go by," Nichols said. "Free access and security are basically opposing concepts. You can only increase one at the expense of the other."