San Benito County supervisors are looking for ways to increase
security at the county courthouse, which the county’s top cop
believes doesn’t provide adequate safety precautions for the public
or prisoners.
Hollister – San Benito County supervisors are looking for ways to increase security at the county courthouse, which the county’s top cop believes doesn’t provide adequate safety precautions for the public or prisoners.
During Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Board Chair Reb Monaco created a subcommittee comprised of himself and Supervisor Don Marcus to work with Superior Court Judge Steven Sanders and Sheriff Curtis Hill to make the courthouse more secure.
“The courthouse is totally inadequate,” said Sheriff Curtis Hill, whose department has the task of transporting inmates to and from court appearances. “There’s too much public access.”
Currently, people are able to freely enter and exit the courthouse without going through any type of security check. Also, shackled inmates are walked through the small courthouse lobby, where there is the possibility for contact with the general public.
Marcus said the subcommittee will focus on creating a more secure entrance to the building and come up with a way to bring inmates into the building without walking them past the general public.
One option, according to Marcus, is building some structure around the entire complex – which also houses other county offices – and creating one secure entry point with metal detectors at the corner of Monterey and Fifth streets. Or the subcommittee could focus on securing the entrance to the courthouse only, while leaving the other county offices as they are, he said.
“That’s kind of a debatable issue,” he said.
There is also the possibility of creating a rear entrance into the building for bringing inmates into the courthouse.
Built more than four decades ago, San Benito County’s courthouse is out-of-date and not set up to deal with the increased security risks of the 21st century, according to Hill.
“Our courthouse is like many courthouses in California that are totally inadequate in security aspects,” he said. “Probably, they were designed for a different era when they didn’t have such a concern about courthouse safety. Now courthouse safety is a major concern.”
The subcommittee will meet periodically to work on security solutions, Marcus said. But, he added, he anticipates progress to be timely.
“The timeline is ASAP,” he said. “It’s something everyone realizes we lack at the courthouse right now.”
The state of California is the court’s funding source. San Benito’s court house is in a dire need of an overall upgrade, according to Sanders. The state has committed to building a new courthouse for about $20 million by 2010, but its location has yet to be decided.
