As of last week, visitors to City Hall are required to sign in at the front door, where they are issued badges that must be worn at all times in the building. Yep, City Hall, the peoples building, is now a symbol of irrational fear. Id give a lecture on democracy and public access, but those ideals evidently went out the window long ago.There is, though, the pointlessness of the exercise: No one actually checks visitors IDs, so whats being achieved, other than annoying the citizenry? The scheme just might scare off angry but otherwise upstanding people who are trying to get answers from City Hall. But any terrorists or squeegee kids or whoever it is were supposed to be afraid of will simply sign a false name and proceed to plug up the toilets, or whatever.And the unarmed commissionaires guarding the place are fine, worthy gentlemen, but—er, how can I put this?—their considerable wisdom and experience has come at the expense of physical dexterity. A determined disrupter, or my little sister, could make mincemeat of the lot of them.Clearly, the only solution is to put armed guards, razor wire and suicide barriers around City Hall.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2008.