When a man carried a pistol into the King County Courthouse and shot three women outside a divorce court eleven years ago, the reverberations spread to Everett.
Public entrances were closed and most people entering the Snohomish County Courthouse had to go through metal detectors and have their packages screened for security reasons.
Two more recent events have sparked more concern about the safety of people visiting and working in the courthouse.
A convict temporarily bluffed his way to freedom in June 2003 by revealing a fake gun in a Pierce County courtroom, only to be shot and killed later while holed up in Monroe.
In 2005, a judge in Atlanta was shot and killed when a disgruntled man carried a gun into a courtroom.
Those incidents led Snohomish County court officials to believe the courthouse wasn’t safe enough.
A national organization recently finished an assessment of security in Snohomish County and found several things that could be done to make people safer in the short term, but a long-term fix would be a new and modern justice building.
“The report points out by the very nature of the kinds of cases, and emotionally charged nature of some cases we hear, that running a courthouse is risky business,” said Thomas Wynne, presiding Snohomish County Superior Court judge. “We need to take steps to manage the risks the best we can.”
The report was done by the National Center for State Courts, an independent, nonprofit organization governed by Supreme Court chief justices and state court administrators. One of the center’s services is recommending security improvements.
The first thing the report recommended was forming a committee of the various courthouse users and other county officials to increase communication. Everyone needs to be on the same page with policies and know who is in charge of security, the report said.
Right now, courthouse marshals come under the control of the county Department of Corrections, while a private security company that checks visitors for dangerous items works under a different county department.
Wynne said he and the county executive’s Deputy Director Deanna Dawson will head the committee. The first meeting is scheduled for later this month. Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon’s proposed 2007 budget includes $200,000 for security improvements.
“We will review the report and make some overall improvements in campus security,” Wynne said.
Among other things, the report recommended:
* Regularly evaluating courthouse marshals, and studying their pay.
* Either expanding or revising the current lobby to avoid congestion and allow better examination of materials entering the courthouse.
* Establishing a customer service booth in the lobby area to reduce distraction of security personnel.
* Making sure all people entering the courthouse pass through security. There are now several locked doors with no security that courthouse workers use.
* Ultimately building a modern and more secure building to replace the courthouse and Mission Building. The courthouse was built in the 1960s and linked to the Mission Building, which dates back to the early 1900s.
The county needs a new justice building, Dawson said, but when it will be built is up in the air. A feasibility study likely will be completed by late summer or next fall.
Among the things to be considered is funding choices and where a justice building should be built, Dawson said. The county has already spent a lot on new buildings recently, completing a $170 million campus redevelopment in 2005.
“The inclination is to locate a space near the current campus,” Dawson said.
Such a facility has been under review for years and the report “underscores from a security aspect the need for a new courthouse,” Wynne said.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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