How Safe is the National Mall on Inauguration Day?
By James Gordon Meek
Putting aside the obvious safety concerns for the first African-American president getting sworn in tomorrow, there is a lot of nervousness about the huge, record-breaking crowd expected on the National Mall. The Mall is the mile-long green which stretches from the Lincoln Memorial on the Potomac River past the Washington Monument to the West front of the Capitol, where Barack Obama will take his oath of office at noon.
I reported in the New York Daily News yesterday that one scenario the U.S. Secret Service - which has ultimate authority over the 56th Presidential Inaugural as a “National Special Security Event” - hopes to avoid is a “Mumbai on the Mall.” The Thanksgiving terror attacks by 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives in India caused over 500 casualties.
While there is no doubt U.S. counterterror teams would respond instantly to any outbreak of violence on the Mall, unlike Indian authorities’ sluggish reaction, it might make little difference.
Secret Service agents and Uniformed Division officers are directly handling tight-as-a-drum security along the parade route on Pennsylvania Ave. from the Capitol to the White House, as well as the Capitol’s reviewing stand. But on the Mall and much of the parade route, security is also being handled by the U.S. Park Police. And because of crowds estimated to be between 1.5 and 2 million people on the Mall to witness history, officials admit they can’t screen them with metal detectors.
“Tuesday we won’t have traditional checkpoints like we do at the 4th of July. The size of the crowd is just going to be too much. We wouldn’t be able to get the people in,” U.S. Park Police Chief Sal Lauro told The News' Mouth of the Potomac Blog in an interview late Sunday.
Lauro said there will be “spot checks, and (we) will have a very strong uniformed presence, and we’ll have multiple layers. There will be plainclothes officers. We’re using technology. It will be a very safe and secure site.”
Cops can search backpacks and coolers, which are discouraged but not banned from the Mall, “if they think something’s suspicious and they have probable cause,” he added.
One senior counterterror official with decades of experience said he doubted anything bad will happen to the crowd on the Mall.
“I’ll actually be surprised if there is any ‘event,’” the official told me. “I’ll read about everything the next day. No way I would venture out on Tuesday.”