WASHINGTON — As inches of snow pile up throughout Washington’s greatest winter storm in two years, there's one place that gained’t be seeing any sn
WASHINGTON — As inches of snow pile up throughout Washington’s greatest winter storm in two years, there’s one place that gained’t be seeing any snowball fights.
The Capitol grounds, among the finest spots within the metropolis for sledding, are actually off limits, one other reverberation of the rampage there on Jan. 6.
Consultant Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting Home delegate, has urged the Capitol Police to permit the custom to proceed this week. The exercise might be carried out safely, Ms. Norton mentioned in an announcement on Saturday, “by permitting solely youngsters and adults accompanied by youngsters” into the realm.
However a Capitol Police spokeswoman, Eva Malecki, citing the present safety issues and town’s coronavirus restrictions, mentioned it couldn’t be permitted. “We, nevertheless, sit up for welcoming sledders again sooner or later,” she mentioned in an announcement.
Whereas a rule towards sledding on the Capitol grounds has been in place for many years, it was not often enforced till after the terrorist assaults on Sept. 11, 2001.
Ms. Norton has pushed for sledding to be allowed on the grounds for years, routinely including a provision to the annual federal spending invoice to “forbear enforcement” of the ban talked about on Web page 175 of the Capitol Police rules. She first succeeded in slipping the pro-sledding provision into the omnibus spending invoice in 2016. (“Go for it!” she informed town’s residents after the ban was lifted that yr.)
The earlier yr, Washingtonians held a “snow-in” on the complicated to protest the rule.
The ban has been revived at one other second of heightened tensions. As an alternative of kids making snowmen and snow angels, guests to the Capitol complicated as of late are greeted by seven-foot-tall, unscalable fencing that went up after the riot.
Chief Pittman, who took over the division when her predecessor resigned days after the riot, mentioned that specialists had argued for larger safety measures for the Capitol even earlier than the Sept. 11 assaults and {that a} safety evaluation in 2006 advisable a everlasting fence.
However in a making an attempt yr, Ms. Norton mentioned, the sledding custom was one pleasure that shouldn’t be erased.
“Youngsters throughout America have endured an especially difficult yr,” she mentioned, “and D.C. youngsters particularly haven’t solely endured the coronavirus pandemic however now the militarization of their metropolis, with the hostile symbols of fences and barbed wire. Sledding is an easy, childhood thrill. It’s the least we are able to permit for our resilient youngsters this winter season.”