Mr. Stern. And they had no disagreement with the route——
Mr. Lawson. No, sir.
Mr. Stern. That was actually selected, no criticism of it? What arrangements did you make with the Dallas police for security along the route, starting from Love Field and getting to the Trade Mart?
Mr. Lawson. A good deal of it was traffic control, both to keep people out of our path as the motorcade progressed so that they would have at least the major intersections covered and as many of the other ones as possible. Those which were not, all intersections that were not able to be controlled physically by a policeman or more than one policeman were to be controlled by motorcycles that would hop-skip the motorcade, or other police vehicles in the motorcade.
At certain times certain intersections were to be cutoff as we proceeded so that it would allow time for any traffic ahead of us to clear the area before we arrived there. Where it was felt from past experience and the type of area that we were passing through there would be large crowds, more police were requested for along the route, and on the routes.
Mr. Stern. Foot policemen or motorcycle patrolmen?
Mr. Lawson. Both, sir. They were requested at the corners to have more than one policeman, so that there would be policemen for watching the crowd and controlling the crowd, and other policemen who would have jurisdiction over the traffic in the area, so that someone wouldn't be watching the crowd and a car going by him or vice versa. We saw the underpasses or overpasses or bridges that were on the route, and they were requested to have officers, depending on the type of installation there that I just mentioned, the type that it was, either under it or over it, on the underpasses. The railroad lines were checked and here was no rail traffic of a scheduled nature over the two rail crossings that we would pass, none on the way in but two on the way out.
However, just to make sure that a switch engine or other trains wouldn't come along about the time we were due there, and then stop the President's motorcade, why we had police stationed at the railroad crossings that were on the same level as the road.
Mr. Stern. What were the instructions that you asked be given to the police who were stationed on overpasses and railroad crossings?
Mr. Lawson. They were requested to keep the people to the sides of the bridge or the overpass so that—or underpass—so that people viewing from a vantage point like that would not be directly over the President's car so that they could either inadvertently knock something off or drop something on purpose or do some other kind of harm.