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04/06/2006:
"Capitol Police Chief Denies Racism Charge"
U. S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said Wednesday that Rep. Cynthia McKinney turned an officer's failure to recognize her into a criminal matter when she failed to stop at his request, and then struck him."He reached out and grabbed her and she turned around and hit him," Gainer said on CNN. "Even the high and the haughty should be able to stop and say, 'I'm a congressman' and then everybody moves on."
For her part, McKinney wasn't backing down from the argument. She charged anew that racism is behind what she said is a pattern of difficulty in clearing Hill security checkpoints.
Gainer said that racism, however, was not a factor.
"I've seen our officers stop white members and black members, Latinos, male and females," he told CNN. "It's not an issue about what your race or gender is. It's an issue about making sure people who come into our building are recognized if they're not going through the magnetometer, and this officer at that moment didn't recognize her."
"It would have been real easy, as most members of Congress do, to say here's who I am or do you know who I am?" Gainer added.
Police also have said that McKinney was failing to wear a pin that lawmakers are asked to display when entering Capitol facilities.
But she said Wednesday: "Face recognition is the issue .... The pin doesn't have my name on it and it doesn't have my picture on it, and so security should not be based on a pin ... People are focused on my hairdo."
The Georgia Democrat, appearing on CBS's "The Early Show" Wednesday, recently dropped her trademark cornrows in favor of a curly brown afro.
"Something that perhaps the average American just doesn't understand is that there is a heightened sense of a lack of appropriateness being there for members who are elected who happen to be of color," McKinney said, "and until this issue is addressed by the American public in a very substantive way, it won't be the last time."
Last Wednesday's incident in a House office building has caused a commotion on Capitol Hill, where security in the era of terrorist threat is tighter than ever and where authorities had to order an evacuation just Monday because of a power outage.
McKinney has garnered little support among fellow Democrats in her feud with the Capitol police. No one in her party chose to join her at a news conference last Friday to discuss the situation, and the event was canceled.
As a federal prosecutor considers whether to press assault or other charges against her, Republicans presented a resolution commending Capitol police for professionalism toward members of Congress and visitors _ even though they "endure physical and verbal assaults in some extreme cases."
"I don't think it's fair to attack the Capitol Police and I think it's time that we show our support for them," said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R- N.C., a sponsor of the measure. Ignoring a police officer's order to stop, or hitting one, "is never OK," McHenry said.
Some GOP members have said the McKinney incident serves to underscore Democratic insensitivity to security concerns.
breitbart.com
McKinney Acting Like 'Arrogant Racist'
Tom Delay, who should be off somewhere skulking in shame, also called McKinney a racist yesterday. And on talk radio? "a welfare drag queen"..."a ghetto slut."
Boortz claimed McKinney "looked like a welfare drag queen"
Referring to Rep. Cynthia McKinney's (D-GA) March 29 altercation with a Capitol Police officer, Neal Boortz attacked McKinney's physical appearance on the March 31 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, stating, "I don't blame that cop for stopping her" because "it looked like a welfare drag queen was trying to sneak into the Longworth House Office Building." He added: "That haircut is ghetto trash." Boortz said he was "absolutely privileged and entitled" to make his comments, based not on his "white privilege," but on his "bald privilege," saying, "I've been enduring jokes about my lack of hair for years," so "I am privileged and entitled to say anything I want about anybody else's hairdo." Boortz then predicted, "Media Matters [for America] will pick up that one," and declared: "[T]hat's why I do things like that, just to give them something to write about." As Media Matters noted, earlier on his program, Boortz had said that McKinney "looks like a ghetto slut."
