As more tempers flare, courthouse security becomes issue

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Magistrate Judge David Morain is, by admission, always guarded.

It’s impossible for him to tell what may happen when someone overcome with anger is ordered to leave his courtroom — will they go peacefully or will they pull a gun?

“I’m my own bailiff,” Morain said.

“Lucky for me,” he quipped, “I’ve got a paper sign that says no guns allowed.”

Security at the century-old Greene County courthouse is under review by a new, 10-person courthouse security committee.

The committee is still months away from issuing any recommendations to the county board of supervisors, but the prevailing thought is that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the county to invest in a metal detector.

“It’s unfortunate we need to be worried about these things,” said Assistant County Attorney Thomas Laehn, chairman of the committee. “The world we live in today, we have to take certain precautions.”

A metal detector that could be put into use on days when a contentious hearing is planned would at least take some weight off the minds of judges like Morain.

“All it takes is one time,” Morain said.

The committee also is at work on a more comprehensive security plan for the courthouse, one that gives employees guidance on what to do in the event of a bomb threat or an active shooter.

Greene County has no such plan, Laehn said.

Finding a balance between tradition and reality will be the committee’s ultimate goal.

For 100 years, Greene County residents have been free to come and go from the courthouse as they please through any of three unlocked entrances.

“The citizens of Greene County own this building,” Laehn said, “and they should be made to feel welcome.”

But the reality is that court proceedings are getting more heated.

“We’re having to be at the courthouse more than ever,” Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams said.

And seldom do they get called for criminal cases.

Deputies are increasingly being asked by judges to stand by during divorces, custody fights and property hearings, Williams said.

“I hear from the judges they have some very tense courtroom moments,” Laehn said.

Laehn, who will be running for county attorney in the November election as a Libertarian candidate, would like the ability to close two of the courthouse’s three entrances and put a metal detector into use on days when a judge suspects that a hearing could get heated.

Williams agrees.

“It wouldn’t be bad to have a metal detector for contentious court cases,” Williams said, “but I don’t think Greene County needs it every day.”

After all, his deputies would be the ones required to man a metal detector.

“Our deputies are already overworked,” Laehn said.

Preserving the beauty and architectural integrity of the historic courthouse is one of the committee’s secondary goals.

It’s for that reason, Laehn said, that an earlier effort to beef up security at the courthouse was put on the back burner for more than a year as the county observed Courthouse 100, a celebration of the building’s centennial.

Ironically, security measures will likely be needed if the Greene County courthouse is to survive.

“If they start seriously looking at terminating judicial services, security measures have to be taken into account,” Laehn said.

Responding in January to proposed budget cuts by Republicans in the Iowa Senate, the Iowa Judicial Branch warned that court services could be eliminated at more than 30 county courthouses across the state’s eight judicial districts.

The ability to screen people for weapons could further position the Greene County courthouse so that “ours is one that survives,” Laehn said.

Greene County is part of Iowa’s second judicial district.

Laehn would like the county to follow Story County’s example. The courthouse in Nevada has one entrance with a metal detector that isn’t always in use.

“But they have the capacity,” he said.

Where to place a metal detector in the Greene County courthouse is the big question.

“Do we only secure the courtroom and judicial chambers, or do we secure the entire building?” Laehn asked.

Williams said if magistrate court could be moved from the first floor to the third, where the district courtroom is, only visitors to the third floor would need to be screened.

That move might also dampen the ire somewhat of Republicans at the statehouse.

Back in June, the state’s top judge, Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark S. Cady, issued an order banning guns from the state’s courthouses, writing that “time is of the essence when safety is threatened.”

According to his order, 44 Iowa counties — including Greene County — already prohibited weapons in their courthouses. But, Cady wrote, local policies failed to provide uniform protection across the state.
“When Iowans believe their courthouses and court facilities are not safe,” he wrote, “the integrity of the entire justice process is compromised and undermined.

"Courthouse security is inseparable from the concept of justice itself.”

Cady revised his order in December to say that areas of a courthouse not occupied by the court system can be exempted from the court’s ban on guns.

That nevertheless provoked state Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa, to introduce Senate File 2044 in January.

The bill would make the judicial branch responsible for courthouse security. Specifically, the cost for security would be taken directly from the salary of a judicial district’s chief judge.

In April 2017, then-Gov. Terry Branstad made it OK to carry a gun into the Iowa Capitol with a valid weapons permit.

But it’s at the county courthouse during a custody hearing or a domestic assault case where emotions can perhaps run highest.

“Any time government and a citizen have interaction, you’re going to have these flashpoints,” Morain said. “At some point, there’s a give or take in rights or a give or take in money.”