Courthouse killings: Often, security improvements come too late

By GENE JOHNSONAssociated Press Writer (AP) – For years, lawyers and judges worried about lax security at the downtown King County Courthouse. It took a bloodbath to get their concerns addressed. Metal detectors went up the next day, and weapons were barred from the building, except for those carried by law enforcement and military personnel. Unarmed civilian screeners keep order alongside armed deputies. Officials in Fulton County, Ga., are now starting a similar crackdown following the shooting of Judge Rowland Barnes and three others at an Atlanta courthouse. The March 11 shooting came just a day after Barnes asked for extra security because the suspect had been found with crude knives hidden in his shoes. “Whenever you have an incident like the one in Atlanta, every judge thinks about it,” said Washington Supreme Court Justice Charles Johnson. “They look around and start thinking about whether what has been done is enough.” Johnson served on a statewide court-security task force following the 1995 Seattle shootings, in which a man walked into the courthouse with a concealed semiautomatic pistol and used it to kill his pregnant, estranged wife and two of her friends as they sat on a bench outside a courtroom. “I think we have the best system possible, but what happened in Atlanta certainly could happen here today, next week, or never,” said John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff’s Office. “There’s always someone bigger and badder and stronger than a particular deputy.” The Atlanta shootings, as well as the killing of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother in Chicago last month, have court officials across the country evaluating security measures, from metal detectors to the availability of guards. There is no clear, nationwide picture of what measures have been taken to secure courthouses. Security in federal courts is handled by a single agency, the U.S. Marshals Service, but at the state and local level security measures vary widely. The National Center for State Courts in Virginia has received a $100,000 Department of Justice grant to hold a court security summit with state supreme court justices next month. “You don’t want to feel that the people in Atlanta died without at least using that to say we’ve learned from it,” said Mary McQueen, president of the courts center and the former Washington state courts administrator. There still is no law barring anyone from carrying a firearm into any Washington courthouse outside King County. In Georgia, deputies at the Fulton County courthouse use metal detectors to prevent the general public from bringing in weapons; court officers, however, are allowed to carry guns in the courthouse. The Atlanta shooter stole a weapon from a deputy. Immediately after the March 11 shootings, Fulton County boosted security, adding 40 uniformed deputies and announcing that high-risk inmates will be transported separately, accompanied by specially trained officers. Florida made similar efforts after three courthouse killings in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Now, all visitors are screened by metal detectors. In Miami-Dade County, bailiffs and corrections guards aren’t armed; instead, armed police officers with special training guard each building, said Jill Beach, spokeswoman for the local 11th Circuit Court. Such measures don’t stop emotional outbursts in divorce proceedings or criminal trials. But they can help ensure that outbursts don’t escalate to gunfire. “Emotions run extremely high in criminal court situations, when people are facing possible incarceration, they sometimes do very unpredictable things,” Beach said. “But there was no way he ever had any chance of getting a weapon.” California’s chief justice recently said two-thirds of his state’s 451 courthouses lack adequate security. One judge, he said, stacked law books in front of his bench as a barrier to bullets after his rural courthouse was the scene of an attempted hostage-taking. Washington provides the least money of any state for prosecutors, public defense and courts, McQueen said. As a result, counties must pay for court security and the measures they take are determined by available funding. Thirty years after a judge was killed by a letter bomb in southeastern Washington’s rural Franklin County, the county courthouse still doesn’t have mail screening and its metal detector only comes out for high-profile cases. “Violence could happen anywhere in a courthouse,” said Franklin County Clerk Mike Killian. “You could have someone who doesn’t want to pay taxes go up and shoot someone in the assessor’s office. … You need to be proactive.”