Some view, huh? Image by Jonathan Neeley.

Last week, the Secret Service announced that it’s closing the north sidewalk on E Street in front of the fence adjacent to the South Lawn of the White House. As a general rule, the arc of secure perimeters in Washington is long… but bends toward more and more restrictive access.

This sidewalk had been closed during nighttime hours for the past couple of years, and was subject to the same intermittent closures that are common to other public rights-of-way in the area of the White House complex. While the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue, made permanent after 9/11, at least spurred the creation of a public plaza space generally open to pedestrians and cyclists, the E Street/Ellipse end of the White House Complex (President’s Park South) remains in purgatory.

Over the past several decades, E Street has been: a) open to two-way vehicular traffic; b) open to one-way, eastbound vehicular traffic only; or c) closed to all vehicular traffic completely, as it has been since 9/11.

Yet, just because E Street has been closed to vehicular traffic does not mean that it has been any more open for pedestrian and cyclist use. On the contrary, the “temporary” Jersey barrier walling off the Ellipse Road from E Street’s four inactive travel lanes has transformed the space into Washington’s version of the DMZ – with similar aesthetics.

E Street, where it meets 15th. This is to stop cars, as the street is closed to them. But it's starting to look like this for pedestrians as well.

Everyday residents don’t use this space much, but tourists use it a ton

So why does this particular closure matter? The problem here is the mentality undergirding the closure, which has facilitated a gradual erosion – symbolic, but mirrored in more practical ways – of the accessibility of American democracy.

For residents and workers who pass this stretch daily and think nothing of the sights along the way, the closure of this particular sidewalk is not very impactful; due to various other security restrictions, the north sidewalk is not continuous between 17th and 15th Streets, necessitating a crossover to the south side of the street. For cyclists, especially, this stretch of sidewalk was never preferable to utilizing the sliver of Ellipse Road that cuts around the crowd of tourists who congregate at the Zero Milestone for pictures.

But for those tourists, those left-side-standing, fanny-pack-wearing folks who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and burn valuable scarce vacation time to visit the nation’s capital…the closure of this sidewalk significantly impacts their experience at one of the must-see sights on any DC itinerary. The view of the South Lawn from E Street is arguably the most picturesque and iconic – not only of the White House itself, but perhaps in all of Washington.

Yet, according to Secret Service Communications Director Cathy Milhoan, the closure is insignificant:

Milhoan said that people who wanted to see or photograph the iconic view of the White House from the south would still be able to get it — just about 25 yards back, across E Street by the Ellipse.

“That vantage point … is still there,” Milhoan said. “It’s just a few feet further back.”

Closing the northern sidewalk fundamentally changes tourists’ experience

This is misleading, at best. The vantage point is still there…two dozen feet farther back, with three more fences/walls (including the omnipresent and gorgeous Jersey barrier) in the foreground – plus whatever Secret Service personnel, vehicles, or passing cyclists might pass into the foreground of your shot as you jockey with two or three dozen people to take the same inferior photo from the same crowded space. There’s a major difference between taking this photo, and getting an unobstructed shot of the White House through the slats of one fence.

Image by Jonathan Neeley.

I don't like piling on people who have a difficult and important job, and an agency that has had a rough go of it, but it's impossible to escape the conclusion that those who will always suffer the most lasting consequences from the Secret Service's repeated and much-publicized security failures over the past several years will be the general public kept at more and more remove from their government.

Ms. Milhoan stated that this closure was not prompted by any particular incident, but rather was a proactive step taken to address a variety of potential hazards:

The plan, Milhoan said, was to create “space between the fence and people.” When people stood right up to the fence, “it limited our ability to identify and respond to potential hazards.”

Restricting public access to the fence line will not only serve to lessen the possibility of individuals illegally accessing the White House grounds,” said Milhoan, “but will also create a clear visual break to enable Secret Service officers to identify and respond to potential hazards, including individuals attempting to scale the fence,” said Milhoan.

I’m in no position to doubt the seriousness of these concerns, but it should be noted that E Street is significantly farther from the White House than Pennsylvania Avenue is. There is considerably more time available to intercept fence-jumpers on the South Lawn, and the ratio of Uniformed Division officers to members of the public present always seems much more heavily balanced in the Secret Service’s favor on the south side.

This is a solution to the wrong problem

It’s also worth noting that moving the secure perimeter back two dozen feet would have done nothing to prevent the most serious security breach on this side of the White House in the past two decades: the discharge of multiple rounds from a semi-automatic rifle at the building from all the way back on Constitution Avenue, which went unnoticed for four days in 2011.

Incidents like that, and various more recent ones involving mentally unstable individuals who managed to gain access to the property for considerable length of time (all intrusions having been initiated at the Penn Ave side), underscore an uncomfortable truth: the security problem at the White House is not one of physical security infrastructure, or lack thereof. It is one of human failure.

The argument that “people are close to our perimeter and might get inside the secure area” is one that can be used virtually without limit in the service of creating an ever-larger compound closed off from the general public.

If decades’ worth of more intrusive restrictions on the way that the public interacts with or transverses this important civic space in our city have failed to curb these incidents, then perhaps it is time for the Secret Service to re-evaluate its approach to the problem. Imposing blunt solutions on outsiders is the path of least resistance for the Secret Service to demonstrate that it is doing something, anything to address recurring issues – even if they do little to solve the problem at great cumulative cost.

More patrols, more personnel on duty, greater and better use of technology – there are a variety of solutions that can be employed as fail safes to address these incidents in a way that doesn’t obstruct public access. Otherwise, the much-vaunted “balance” between security and openness to the general public that the Secret Service speaks of is not much of a balance at all.

This statue is part of the White House complex, but about a block east of the White House Lawn. Will these kids one day talk about how incredibly close they were allowed to get? Image by Jonathan Neeley.

Let’s not let inches become miles

Today, it is the E Street sidewalk. Tomorrow, who knows? It is not inconceivable to me that, at the rate we’re going, non-cleared members of the public could be completely barred from the Ellipse, E Street, Lafayette Park, and Pennsylvania Avenue entirely in my lifetime. And based on the Secret Service’s interest in converting the 1400 block of F Street to one-way operation a few years ago, these generous borders might not even be generous enough for the Secret Service’s security ambitions.

And then, much as older Washingtonians can regale newcomers with tales of driving up to the White House’s front door, all we’ll be left to do is tell our grandkids about the halcyon days when one could walk along a fence line.