Cedar Rapids won't be tightening security at City Hall

No metal detectors and no locked front or side entrance doors during the workday are in the offing for the Cedar Rapids City Hall.

That's the upshot of a City Council discussion and public safety training session this week, 13 months after City Hall completed its move into what had been the high-security former federal courthouse at 101 First St. SE.

Mayor Ron Corbett this week said the city transformed what had been the flood-damaged former courthouse into City Hall with the idea that it would be open to the public and would invite people to come and go.

"So having limited access isn't something we're looking to change," Corbett said. "We don't want to put it under lock and key."

Some on the council, he said, wanted to discuss the idea of using metal detectors in the building, but the idea did not get any traction with the full council, he said.

The bombing of the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City in 1995 prompted the federal government to beef up security at its courthouses across the country, and in Cedar Rapids, the public could enter the building through a single south side door where they were greeted with a metal detector.

Now, the public can enter an assortment of doors on the front and sides what is now City Hall.

City Council member Justin Shields, who is chairman of the council's Public Safety Committee, on Wednesday noted that the City Council is interested in the safety of all the city employees who work in the building, and not simply the council members during council meetings.

Someone as easily could turn aggressive against the city manager or a department head, for instance, when they aren't getting their way as they could against council members, he said.

Shields said some people get aggravated, and he said he wonders if their problems are going to trigger violence.

"The worst part of it is everybody (on the council) wants to play junior detective with this kind of stuff," Shields said. "‘Oh, I don't think this person will ever get violent.' And they have no idea. They're not trained or skilled in that field whatsoever to be making those kinds of judgments. It can be a very serious problem."

For some years now, the city has positioned a uniformed police officer in a visible spot in the council chambers during council meetings, and the police chief or a top police commander also attend every council meeting. Shields said a plain clothes officer typically sits in the audience, too.

Even so, Shields said he can grow wary in the infrequent instances when someone gets upset during the public comment period at council meetings.

"If someone if starting to get really aggravated, I look around to make sure the uniformed police officer is sensing the same thing I'm sensing," he said.

It's been almost 27 years now since Ralph Davis, a resident upset about a sewer backup, shot up a Mount Pleasant City Council meeting, killing Mayor Edd King and wounding two council members.

Corbett - who was elected as a 26-year-old to the Iowa Legislature a month before the Mount Pleasant shooting - remembers the mayor's death well.

In its discussion and training this week, the Cedar Rapids council went through a variety of scenarios of how to react in the event of violence during a council meeting.

"You hope something like that never happens in Cedar Rapids," the mayor said. "We train for natural disasters like tornadoes. So we also do that to make sure we're prepared if it's an incident involving guns."