For the record, I was one of the many people who was trapped outside the Silver gate on Independence and 3rd...I saw the line collapse and people were generally trapped for more than an hour next to the HHS building. People kept pouring into that block, then tons of people started coming back on to 3rd from the Mall, saying they had closed the gate. It wasn't just crowded. We were squeezed against each other and only moved when the force of the crowd moved one way or another. It was scary, and only the fact that everyone seemed in a jubilant mood kept it from getting ugly. Despite the crowding and the sheer mass of people there was zero police or security presence. Rumors kept swirling that they had closed the Mall. There was no order.
Prior to this we had been in line for three hours. The much advertised port-a-potty shortage was evident, there were none for those of us in line, they were all inside the secure zone. This caused a member of my party to, uh, take the matter into his own hands.
Finally, something gave...the crowd poured across Independence...and then a security barrier went down and we rushed out onto the Mall. I saw no police. No checkpoint. No effort by security to stop hundreds of unscreened people from getting on the Mall several hundred yards from where the most heavily protected man on the planet was standing.
Everything the police has said about why people couldn't get on the Mall doesn't make sense to me. There was room, as satellite pictures show. We were clearly barred from getting on the Mall, and then security just vanished and the unscreened masses ran onto the "secure" zone.
The fact that there were no injuries is somewhat a miracle (though my bladder may be permanently stretched, I held it for four hours). But it wasn't the smooth operation they are spinning it to be.
It was not crowd control we could believe in.
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