No Kidding, AMCITs Often Engage in 'Client Aggression' At Consular Hardline Windows

Why the ACS section also has hardened glass: Entitled AMCITs pic.twitter.com/quNkpIkwWF

— diplomattitude (@diplomattitude) December 31, 2023

In the halcyon pre-Inman days of embassy security there were no physical barriers at all between Consular Officers and their clients, whether foreign or domestic. "Hardline" walls, doors, and especially windows started to be introduced around 1985-ish, often to furious opposition. 

Those of us who implemented the new requirements had only one reliable ally, and that was the low-level officer who had to sit behind the new windows. The bosses often railed against those windows - which, in fairness, had problems that were yet to be solved, such as poor sound transmission* - but I noticed that the poor officers who had to sit behind them were silently grateful. 

Now, as to AMCITs versus foreigners, any experienced Consular guy that you asked back then told you that the worse threat came from AMCITs. That was so true that when we didn't have the security money to install hardline glass at every consular window at a given post, we prioritized installing it in ACS sections, because those were often the only places the staff had been physical threatened and/or assaulted. 

Being a numbers guy, I researched this phenomenon with CA/EX in order to document the incidence of assaults on Consular Officers - "client aggression" was the term back then - and justify prioritizing security resources on ACS sections. It was counterintuitive maybe, but easily provable, that THAT was where the threat was.

* About that poor sound transmission, consider that office equipment located behind the hardline in those days, especially printers, was incredibly loud. Consider also that there were no privacy booths for most interviews. Add just the slightest touch of deafness on the part of the officer conducting an interview, and you got this kind of thing: "What? Eh? Tell me again, only louder, about all the personal stuff that compels you to come here today, and please disregard the rows and rows of your fellow foreigners who are sitting just feet away from you on that side of the hardline. Now proceed."