Once again, downtown Washington is dealing with the security needs of the International Monetary Fund. Because of the many protests and because of the needs of participants to move around the city there are a number of street closures.

Since we’ve been doing this for years and years, you would think that Metropolitan Police would, by now, have a plan that allows commuter and other traffic to keep moving around the closure points. If you bet any money on that at all, you probably also liked the Mets’ chances of getting to the World Series.

No, once again the philosophy of the Metropolitan Police is to just close things down and let everyone figure out how to get where they're going. 18th, 19th and 20th Streets were all closed during yesterday's rush hours south of Pennsylvania Avenue.

I didn’t see every closure point or every intersection, but what I did see was this: a dozen or so MPD officers standing behind the temporary metal fencing; some of them leaning on the fence as they had a good laugh or two with their comrades. In front of them, traffic on the streets that were still open (Pennsylvania Avenue and 19th Street north of

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the intersection) was at a standstill.

When is the plan for these regular IMF closures going to include some active traffic direction by live officers actually standing in the intersection? Is it of any real value to have them standing behind the fences having a good old time at taxpayers’ expense and taxpayers’ frustration?

If those officers were positioned in the middle of the intersections directing traffic they would be no more than 40 feet away from the sidewalk if the situation demanded their assistance. Moving traffic through the city and around these closure points would seem to result in a much safer scenario than creating gridlock by their total inattention. Maybe the city is trying to look and act as much like a Third-World as it can in hopes of getting its debts written off as well.

Questions, comments, random musings? Write to Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com.