At least take down the razor wire: D.C. residents, lawmakers chafe at Capitol fence

It was a modest plea from D.C. residents to the Capitol Police during a virtual town hall: If they couldn’t take down the seven-foot fence surrounding the Capitol, could they at least remove the razor wire?

“It could be the beginning of normalcy,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, suggested to Assistant Police Chief Chad Thomas at the Feb. 11 meeting.

But days went by, and the razor wire and fencing installed after the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol remains. Norton, District residents and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have grown more irritated with the unsightly barriers closing people out of the Capitol - and, in the view of aleast some lawmakers, closing some in.

“It’s kind of like working in a minimum-security prison right now,” Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., told acting Capitol Police chief Yogananda Pittman during a Thursday hearing before the House Appropriations Committee.

Pittman and Timothy Blodgett, the House’s acting sergeant-at-arms, said they are awaiting several security reviews before making a decision about the fence, but that it would remain at least through President Joe Biden’s first address to Congress because of threats of violence from militia groups.

The date of Biden’s address has not been announced. Pittman did not describe the source or credibility of the intelligence, and some lawmakers questioned whether the threat is concrete enough to justify what increasingly feels like the new normal in Washington.

Residents’ commutes and recreational activities - bike riding, dog walking, picnics - have been disrupted. They have signed petitions, put up signs and contacted their local representatives. Jay Adelstein, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, noted that the fencing surrounds much more than the Capitol itself.

“We have a botanical garden on Independence by the Capitol that is inaccessible. We have the beautiful outdoor Bartholdi Park, which is a gem of the Capitol, that is inaccessible,” he said. “No tourist is going to want to come to the Capitol or to Washington, D.C., with the city in such a locked-down state.”