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| Building ‘security’ measures depend some on geography |
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A newspaper story about Oregon courthouses reminded me how much things have changed. The report says there are 48 courthouses in Oregon, and most of them need repairs for security reasons.
There’s one in the capital city of Salem, for example, where a guy drove a truck through the front doors, fired his shotgun and set some fires. The county spent around $12 million for repairs. How do they assure a secure situation when a person goes off like that?
Oregon has one courthouse with two stories but no elevator, and another that used to be a hospital. Some have been damaged by earthquakes and others weren’t built very well in the first place. There’s obviously room for improvement, but you can’t have everything.
I remember the many years I worked in rural courthouses. That was always a friendly environment where we had a sense of security and situations where we expected some common sense.
Extension agents have it made when it comes to security.
If anyone gets really mad at the county agent, he’s generally cooled off by the time he can find the office.
Most counties have banned all weapons from the courthouse and many have installed security buzzers. Nobody had a security buzzer when I first started government work.
A local newspaper story claimed a maintenance official fixed two bullet holes in the courthouse during the previous six years.
Both of these plaster wounds were caused by accidental discharges of firearms by sheriffs’ deputies. (I don’t know about others, but I would think twice before pushing a buzzer attached to one of those guys.)
The main thing I remember about courthouse security is the training of jail trustees for outside jobs. The custodian was the jailer, and he was good at finding chores for the inmates.
One of the best jobs for the trustees in those days was skinning deer that had been killed on the road. It wasn’t like today when a road-killed deer might simply be disposed of. We called that product “center-line venison” and looked for someone who could skin it and cut it up.
Many times I have trudged down to the courthouse basement looking for supplies or equipment, while a deer carcass would be hanging from the ceiling.
A couple of inmates would be whacking away with their butcher knives as I walked by.
One day when I was upstairs at the front desk of the sheriff’s office, two of the jail’s trustees came marching through.
They were dressed in orange and pushing a cart filled with butcher knives, whetstones and saws.
“We can’t get this cart down the stairs so Jim said to use the elevator,” they told the deputy. Then, the trustees proceeded out the door and down the main hallway of the courthouse.
The deputy watched as the men in prison garb pushed their cart of knives and saws down the public courthouse hallway and waited for the elevator to the basement. Then she turned to me and said, “You know, there’s something about that picture that doesn’t look quite right.” |
| 1/21/2009 |
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