Reaction from the blogosphere was swift and overwhelmingly critical of D.C.’s plan to barricade crime-ravaged neighborhoods, many describing the District as a “police state.”
When people need permission to enter a community via a vehicular checkpoint, as Mayor Adrian Fenty and Police Chief Cathy Lanier have proposed in their Neighborhood Safety Zone program, “that is a police state,” Mark Draughn wrote on windypundit.com.
“One of the hallmarks of police states everywhere is the internal checkpoint,” Draughn wrote. “Think of all the movies you’ve seen where some Nazi or Soviet bureaucrat — backed up by uniformed thugs — is blocking a road or a train platform and demanding that people ‘show me your papers!’ ”
Megan McArldle on TheAtlantic.com asked “Where the Hell am I living?” in a blog entry titled “All Hail Comrade Fenty.”
“Crime tears the fabric of society, but so does a government which believes that it may at any time control the movements of its citizens like so many (presumptively suspicious) sheep,” McArdle wrote.
Lanier gave no indication Thursday of backing down. The bottom line, she told WTOP, “is we’ve got to do something.”
The first checkpoint will be established this weekend in Trinidad, with a likely expansion to neighborhoods in Southeast Washington, the chief told a caller to the radio station who described the idea as “great.”
“The plan is available for all areas of the city,”Lanier said.
Officers manning the checkpoints will require all vehicles to stop, and all occupants to provide identification and prove that they have a “legitimate” reason for passing. A person who attempts to enter a zone without permission is subject to arrest.
Pedestrians, however, will not be stopped, a fact that left DCist.com’s Sommer Mathis “stunned by how silly this plan appears to be.”
But the writer of livinginthedistrict.com called for patience.
“Let’s see what the results are next week or after 10 days before we make any judgments!” blogger Shaun wrote. “Anything is better than last weekend where 7 people were killed in a span of 48 hours.”
