State Legislatures Magazine: January 2001

Editor's Note: This article appeared in the January 2001 issue of NCSL's magazine, State Legislatures. To order copies or to subscribe, contact the marketing department at (303) 364-7700.

Keeping Our Capitols Secure

As the World Turns
High-Tech Helpers
Be Prepared
When a Threat Is Not a Threat

Matching Technology to the Building

Keeping Our Capitols Secure

Statehouses need to be as open to the people as possible as well as safe places to work.

By Garry Boulard
To outsiders it may have seemed like a harmless prank when an environmental activist pushed a cream pie into the face of Minnesota Senator Carol Flynn just outside the Senate chamber, but the staff of the state's Capitol Complex Security Division weren't laughing.

They were, in fact, incensed.

"It was an outrage," says Sergeant Mike Parker with the statehouse's security office. "There was nothing funny about it. It was a breach of security and an unwarranted attack on a member of the Legislature."

A county judge agreed. Several months after the attack, Robert Greenberg was sentenced to 20 days in jail even after his attorney argued that the pie-throwing incident was not done maliciously. "Mr. Greenberg intended to make a statement about her abuse of power," the attorney said, referring to Flynn's refusal to hear a bill favored by environmentalists who were opposed to the expansion of a major highway in Minneapolis.

While Greenberg's attack did nothing to stop the highway bill from eventually becoming law, it did help prompt lawmakers to contemplate the nature of their security.

"I think it was one of those things that got a lot of people thinking," Parker observed. "The members, the governor and the staff should feel safe when they are working here. If they're not, then we're doing something wrong."

Fuel was added to the fire by a series of threats made against the state's controversial governor, Jesse Ventura, who has emerged as a lightning rod for attacks.

Ventura, during his first 14 months in office, received at least 30 threats and nearly 40 harassing communications, more than twice the number of his predecessor, according to the state's Capitol Security Division.

One man, who left nine messages last February threatening both Ventura and his children with violence, was sentenced to 10 days in jail on a misdemeanor charge of harassing communications.

For his part, Ventura seems nonplussed, telling reporters that hardly a week goes by when someone doesn't threaten him.

"It goes with the territory," he remarked.

But for Minnesota Senator Randy Kelly and Representative Rich Stanek, that territory has become far too dangerous. In the last legislative session they proposed two bills designed to upgrade security at the statehouse, which is currently handled by some 48 security guards. The guards are noncommissioned, which means they do not carry guns on a regular basis, nor do they have other police powers.

Kelly wanted to add four sworn, (commissioned) officers to the division, while Stanken aimed to create a separate police force devoted to protecting the statehouse alone.

"We have a serious security problem here, and this is a very modest proposal," Kelly told members of the Senate Governmental Operations Committee. His bill, however, was reduced to adding just four state troopers, at a cost of $400,000, to the governor's security detail of 11, instead of the Capitol force.

But from Parker's perspective, the debate was a good thing.

"I think it brought out concerns that a lot of us have about security," the sergeant reflects. "You want to keep the statehouses as open to the people as possible. But it is also a dangerous world out there, and you can't pretend to ignore that."

AS THE WORLD TURNS
That world repeatedly intrudes. Last year security was tightened after racist graffiti was painted inside the Washington state capitol building in Olympia. During that same week, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were worried about possible terrorist groups coming across the Canadian border to cause trouble on the Millennial New Year's Eve.

Two weeks before that, Colorado state troopers forcibly removed a drunken man who tried to bite them after screaming at portraits of Presidents Lincoln and Carter in the Capitol rotunda. Only days before that, the legislature agreed to some $700,000 to upgrade the statehouse's security measures.

And just about every statehouse went through the throes of an agonizing self-appraisal in the wake of the shooting of two Capitol police officers in the U.S. Capitol during the summer of 1998.

"That is the kind of incident that gets a lot of people to wondering where they are in their own states," says Tony Beard, the sergeant-at-arms of the California Senate, who has overseen some of the most comprehensive statehouse security innovations in the nation.

"And we should think about these things," Beard continues, "because there are more threats out there than ever before. Society today is much more confrontational than it used to be. So you have to think not only about your own safety, but the safety of your staff, too. Threats may seem like they come with a lawmaker's job, but they don't come with your secretary's job. She is the one who is sitting out there at the desk and is going to reap the wrath of the person coming in."

Beard comes by his subject naturally: Both his father and grandfather enjoyed long careers in law enforcement in and around California's Capitol. Beard himself was present on the day in the late 1960s when the unthinkable happened as a band of armed Black Panthers walked into the California statehouse, brandishing their weapons and dressed in military fatigues. They were on their way to a third floor balcony where they hoped to get a better view of the chamber.

Ironically, the Panthers casually walked by a startled then-Governor Ronald Reagan, who was holding a press conference on the Capitol lawn.

"An armed group could not come in today," Beard says. "But what they did in 1967 was actually completely legal. We had no law at that time that said you could not come in here with a loaded pistol or rifle.

"Things have changed a little bit since then," he adds.

HIGH-TECH HELPERS
Indeed, today all 50 of the nation's statehouses have at least one or two electronic security devices up and running. Closed circuit TV for one or both houses of the legislature is the most popular, followed by hand-held and walk-through metal detectors.

But increasingly, capitol security forces are finding that their jobs are not defined simply by the amount of firearms or equipment they possess, but by the delicate relationship they share with legislators and their staffs.

"You can have all of the equipment you like," says Watson Holley, the chief of the Capitol police division of the Georgia Building Authority, "but if you don't have a trained security staff and the cooperation of everyone who works in the Capitol, that equipment is not going to be of much help."

The Georgia statehouse is one of the nation's most secure, with a security fence around the Capitol building, walk-through metal detectors, hand-held detectors and closed circuit TV in virtually every crevice of the structure. It is also a place where cooperation between legislators, staff and security is key to making the whole system work.

"We had some problems with lawmakers who didn't appreciate having to take everything out of their bags and empty their pockets every time they went through the detector system and something went off," admits Holley.

"So we sat down and talked with them. We told them about the dangers we're all facing today, but we also worked with them," he adds. "If it's in the middle of the session, and it's an elected official with an ID card whom we know and they go through and the buzzer goes off, we'll let them off the hook."

That kind of cooperation is also prominent in South Carolina where the capitol security staff has worked with both members and staffers in a series of seminars designed to emphasize such issues as how to act in hostage negotiation or what to do in the event of a bomb.

"We have a lot of conversations with the staff and the members," says James Melton, the sergeant-at-arms for the South Carolina Senate. "We know what their concerns are, and we try to teach them ours. In addition, I require that all of my officers know each and every person who works in the State House."

With walk-through metal detectors outside both houses of the South Carolina State House, as well as closed circuit TV and a security force of 10 full-time officers, the capitol police have had few real incidents to report in the past 10 years.

BE PREPARED
But sometimes even the best-laid security plans fall short in the face of real events. That was the case last spring as more than 10,000 angry protesters descended on the South Carolina State House in Columbia demanding that the Confederate flag, which had flown over the Capitol for 18 years, be taken down.

Reporters at the largest rally noted that some of the protestors were angry enough to talk of storming the capitol building itself, but Melton says his biggest concern was the safety of the demonstrators.

"The most important thing you can do in a situation like that is to be prepared," Melton says. "If you have that many people, someone is going to have a problem. You have to be prepared for that. You have to have medical facilities on the alert and available in case something does happen."

Miraculously, the largest Confederate flag demonstration went off with no injuries, attacks on the State House or threats to the people in it. But capitol security forces admit that despite their best efforts, they cannot anticipate every danger that threatens a lawmaker, particularly when that lawmaker leaves the capitol grounds.

A case in point is Connecticut, site of one of the most volatile and heated tax debates in the country when lawmakers in the early 1990s were wrestling with a series of bills to raise both state property and income taxes.

"Most state legislatures issue their lawmakers motor vehicle registration plates," says William Morgan, a chief with the Connecticut State Capitol police. "But when you put them on your car you become a driving billboard for what you do."

During the tax debate, those plates proved to be irresistible targets for taxpayers angry with the legislature.

"Lawmakers told us people were driving too close to them or in other threatening ways on the highway," remembers Morgan. "And every time I heard this complaint, I found out the lawmakers in question had one of those plates on their cars. When something like that happens, there's not much we can do about it."

Threats beyond the immediate vicinity of the statehouse have also spurred the Division of Capitol Police assigned to protect the Virginia statehouse to create a bike patrol from its 100-member force that will protect lawmakers, their staffs and other state employees who go from one government building to another in a downtown area riddled with crime.

"In Richmond, we have the same kind of problems that you see in any major urban area," says Capitol Police Captain Larry Dollings. "So we have responded to those problems like an urban police force, even though our first priority remains protecting the people in the State Capitol."

With the mission of patrolling some 50 separate state buildings in the downtown Richmond area, as well as nearly 30 parking lots and loading docks connected to those buildings, the Virginia Capitol Police have also used a "flexible shift" management approach that allows for moving up to a third or more of its force for different patrol duties at different times of the day and on different parts of the state government complex, depending upon the particular challenge.

Virginia has also used one of the first bomb dog squads in the nation specifically for statehouse security. The canine force, which currently consists of two dogs in training, "is not in response to any specific threat we have had along these lines," explains Dollings. "It is just part of our ongoing effort to always be prepared for something. That is the most important thing you can do in security."

Perhaps the most preparation-oriented statehouse in the country today is California where Capitol security not only regularly simulates bombing and terrorist threats for both members and their staffs, but also has conducted a series of seminars around the topic of what they call "threat assessment."

"A lot of people say someone threatened them," says Sergeant-at-Arms Beard, "but we have them first tell us what happened. Then we decide if they were threatened or not."

WHEN A THREAT IS NOT A THREAT
The distinction for Beard and his force is an important one: In a democracy, he notes, particularly when heated issues such as taxes, gay rights and abortion come to the fore, people have a tendency to respond angrily, oftentimes telling a member and his staff exactly what they think of them.

"Even someone who says 'I'd like to see all of you guys dead' may not really be a threat," continues Beard. He also notes that there's not much difference between a man with a shaved head and an abundance of tattoos and another man in a business suit. They are both just as likely to be a problem.

"You can't judge people any more by how they look or even so much what they say," Beard says.

What Beard and his force stress instead is the pattern nuisance: the person who sends a threatening letter, then maybe an angry phone call or e-mail message, perhaps followed up by a series of visits.

"That is the kind of situation I would be much more worried about," he says, adding, "We just try to emphasize awareness by all the people who work here. That, in the long run, is the most important thing we can do to protect our statehouses."

Garry Boulard, a frequent contributor to State Legislatures, is a free-lance writer from New Orleans.

Matching Technology to the Building

Securing a statehouse with the latest technology, which now can include clunky metal detectors with beeping television screens and cumbersome conveyor belts, is one thing.

But transforming an elegant and airy capitol corridor into something crowded with wires, cables, screens and other high-tech equipment that appears to belong at the passenger gate of the local airport is quite another.

"You have to take into consideration how our capitols were intended to look and not let things get too junky," says Jerry Lawler, the executive director of the Michigan Capitol Committee in Lansing. He has worked to make the statehouse there more technologically friendly, while maintaining the open integrity as envisioned by the original architects.

Built in 1879 and designed by the legendary Elijah E. Myers, who was nationally regarded in the late 1800s as the country's premier builder of state capitols, the Michigan State Capitol underwent an extensive renovation that would continue for more than five years beginning in 1987.

That renovation was, in part, designed to accommodate all of the support systems needed for today's emerging high-tech computer and security systems.

"We essentially installed wires throughout the building for the new technology, but not all of the wires are being used," explains Lawler. "They are just there if we need them."

When the question came up of how much security the lawmakers of Michigan wanted, a metal detector system was ruled out in favor of a more extensive television surveillance network that allows every section and corner of the building to be monitored.

Meanwhile, Lawler notes, "The rotunda halls and corridors and major committee rooms all have buried conduits in them for closed circuit TV, just in case we need them for something in the future."

The Michigan statehouse is further secured by unobtrusive cameras strung up around the building's massive exterior. A series of pressure pads that can be used to detect foot traffic are hidden beneath carpeting throughout the interior of the building.

In Texas, where the century-old, pink granite Capitol was renovated in a massive two-part effort that lasted for most of the early 1990s, metal detectors are used only for special events, notes Rick Crawford, the executive director of the Texas State Preservation Board.

"We tried to make all of the security equipment as unobtrusive as possible while at the same time making certain the statehouse was entirely secure," says Crawford. That effort entailed the installation of cameras-some of which are barely visible high up in the marble corners of the building's gracious corridors-throughout the statehouse.

Crawford notes that "making the statehouse as visually inviting as possible" was one of the principal reasons why the large metal detector machinery lost out to a more flexible and less cumbersome television surveillance system.

"But at the same time, we really emphasized security by the large number of officers from the department of public safety that we have in here at any time of the day," continues Crawford.

"They are all over this building, and I think it makes people realize, just by seeing them, how secure the statehouse really is."

Similarly, lawmakers at the California Capitol, which was built during the 1860s with a decided Roman Corinthian influence, emphasized maintaining the vision of original architects M. F. Butler and Reuben Clark when they began the renovations of that building beginning in the late 1970s.

Tony Beard, the sergeant-at-arms of the California Senate, remembers that during the renovation (which was completed in 1982 and emphasized bringing back the original look of the Capitol both externally and internally), the statehouse's security force was in regular contact with the project's architectural historians to make certain that any modern security devices were installed in a way that did nothing to detract from the building's historical splendor.

"This is the kind of thing where people have to talk to each other to find out what they want," Beard now says of the renovation effort, which was lauded by both preservationists and architects across the country upon its completion.

"There is no reason why our needs for security and security equipment should run at a cross-purpose to the integrity of the building," Beard adds. "You can have both, as long as you work together."

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