One of my many duties is to oversee a security operation for an industrial facility of about 600 employees. When I first took over the job, the guard had no effective means to check IDs or stop traffic. He was just expected to wave in all the employees because he "knew everybody".
Well, after observing operations for about an hour, it because clear that he was just waving in everybody. When I asked why, he said that he did not have time to recognize each person, and by the time he tried to stop anybody, they were already past him. I could have replaced him with a mechanical dummy with a waving arm and gotten just as much security.
I spent a couple of bucks and bought a card reader system and lift arm for the front gate. Now it was possible for the guard to check ID on each vehicle prior to opening the gate. In other words, it made it possible for him to do his job.
Now came the hard part. Now I had to convince 600 employees that they now had to stop and have their IDs checked, after they had been blowing through the front gate for the past 10 years. It took a lot of yelling and screaming, and I had to replace the wooden gate about 20 times, but eventually I got compliance. I had to transfer my normal daytime security crew to another site for a month, but eventually everybody accepted the new system.
But every now and then I get some damn VIP who insists on having a special arrangement so they don't have to produce the ID badge. As soon as this happens, things start falling apart again, because the guard starts "recognizing" his regulars and punching the gate to speed things up. So I have to fight to good fight, and tell people ten steps above my pay grade that they have to follow the rules, just like the little people. I gotta tell you, that makes for some pretty uncomfortable conversations.
I can only imagine what the Capitol Police have to go through, with 535 Prima Donnas running around, and that's before you even get to the AHs who populate their staffs. My heart really goes out to those guys.
I you have one rule for everybody, you have a working system. If you have five different rules for five different classes of people, you got nuthin. But if anything every happened, and security broke down on Capitol Hill, you just know it would be the idiots like Cynthia McKinney bellowing the loudest about "How could this have happened!?!"
BTW, do you think it is a Federal crime for one of the Little People to wear a similar pin?
After reading the several posts and also having had experience with a security force at a large facility with a host of VIPs, I can only say that Congressman McKinney is proving that she lives at the height of total pretention to think every Capitol Police officer on every day can recognize immediately every member of congress.
Not wearing the label pin or having the courtesy to have their Congressional ID handy sends the signal - "Hey You, I am so important that you must recognize me on the spot every time even when I am going to great lengths to change my appearance.
Most guys hardly recognize their own wives after they have had a beauty makeover, so get over it.
It doesn't make sense to me. My husband is an attorney, and there are many courthouses (even county ones) which require id checks, scans of briefcases and bags, etc. Why should the Capitol have less security? Most of the guards probably know the attorneys who regularly practice in the court... but they still do the checks.