A recent study by the Washington State Board for Judicial Administration (BJA) provides information to help protect our courts from violence. The BJA, co-chaired by Grant County District Court Judge Janis Whitener-Moberg and King County Superior Court Judge Steven C. González, adopted Public Safety Standards for Washington State Courthouses in July 2007.
The Standards provide guidance for courts of all sizes in all parts of Washington for implementing security training, screening, weapons policy, use of force, alarm systems, key card access, threat assessment and facility design.
Additionally, the Administrative Office of the Courts assisted to develop a comprehensive system for reporting and tracking security incidents across the state. The incidents that have been reported in the last two years are striking, both in number and scope of threat and attack, according to Judge González.
Increased presence of law enforcement is one of the primary issues on which our courts need to focus.
Weapons screening stations should have:
• Adequate room for people to congregate inside, out of the weather, without being so crowded as to present additional security problems.
• A magnetometer, x-ray equipment, and hand-held magnetometers for backup screening.
• A duress alarm to summon additional help if needed.
• Closed circuit television monitoring of the access point.
• Adequate staffing of at least two trained staff to monitor traffic flow and at least one officer with a weapon to observe and respond to emergencies.
• Access to a private area to conduct more thorough searches using same gender personnel.
Emphasis added
Federal Way Municipal Court has one unarmed security guard at the metal detectors. Two armed bailiffs are usually busy transporting prisoners; Federal Way personnel with whom I have spoken are concerned for their own safety, the safety of judges, attorneys and other parties such as defendants and witnesses, as well as the public.
Indeed! The metal detector ensures that only an occasional LEO inside the courthouse is armed but also ensures that an intruder that can get past the unarmed security officer will be in an almost gun free environment. If such a scenario seems far-fetched then why do we have the metal detectors? In fact, Judge González states, every kind of threat, including threats to prosecutors and judges are on the upsurge and numerous judges, attorneys and other persons have been gunned down in the courtrooms of the United States.
Sudden violence has erupted in King County courts, too!
If we ask folks to disarm in order to enter the courthouse, we need to take reasonable precautions against foreseeable threats. The presiding judge can take some leadership on such issues and should be doing so.
In the entrance to the Thurston County District Court there are usually two attendants, both experienced LEOs, always with sidearms. In the Kitsap County Courthouse there are often three officers, always armed. In neighboring Fife there is an armed security officer at the metal detectors and always an armed bailiff in the courtroom. The prosecutor is also armed.
Many judges are also armed, according to well-placed sources. King County Superior Court and the King County District Courts station armed sheriff’s deputies along with unarmed security guards at the metal detectors.
Of course, there are also other courts in our area that choose to remain in denial as to the level of threat confronting those of us that enter the courthouse doors.
Any public official, including a judge, should be willing to sacrifice some of his or her salary in order to provide an armed presence at the entrance to our courthouse. Any city council member that is willing to sacrifice the safety of the public in order to solve the current budget crisis should be voted out of office.
See it for real: Video of man with AK-47 invading a courthouse.
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By Mark S. Knapp, Attorney at Law
In 1994, Congress enacted a ban on assault weapons. President Clinton declared that such semi-automatic weapons were “built only for the purpose of killing people.” In the estimation of President Clinton and the United States Congress, Americans did not need such weapons to hunt and practice marksmanship. In 2004, the ban expired because its supporters could not show any impact on crime.
Americans increasingly favor owning light, semi-automatic rifles that fire many rounds (one pull of the trigger at a time) for competition and other purposes like protecting our children from predatory criminals. What makes assault weapons (AW) distinctively different from other semi-automatic weapons?
Automatic weapons that fire more than one shot with one pull of the trigger are already prohibited under federal law. Politicians seeking to gradually eliminate gun ownership know that the ability to create a banned category of weapons provides politicians with power to expand an Assault Weapon Ban to all semi-automatic weapons or even to weapons that hold more than ten rounds.
Thus, politicians recognize that by creating a list of characteristics defining certain weapons as illegal, firearms can be regulated out of existence. Many people think that pistols have no legitimate purpose. Is it true, however, that firearms with “legitimate” hunting and sporting purposes are the only weapons that Americans should be allowed to possess?
The men that drafted the Constitution had an intense debate that was finally settled by leaving the question of standing armies and military preparedness to the executive and legislative branches of the state and federal governments. In the event that inadequate attention to security issues put national security at risk, it was decided that the people themselves should be ready to take up arms to protect the Republic. On the other hand, the question of how to curtail a tyrant from controlling a large standing army was also addressed by providing for an armed populace.
The Second Amendment secures other liberties like the right to express dissent and to be free from governmental intrusions while enjoying privacy in our homes. State and federal legal cases resound with the precept that militarily useful weapons, not sporting goods, are what the U.S. and state constitutions provide for. Laws that required citizens to have a working rifle, suitable for military purposes and a prescribed amount of ammunition were common until modern standing military forces became the rule. Semi-automatic versions of the M-16, determined to be militarily useful by the United States government, are deployed every weekend as rifles of choice in competitions all over the State of Washington and the U.S.
10 USC 311 defines the militia as consisting “of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and… under 45 years of age….” The U.S. Constitution distilled legal wisdom from the classical world of Greece and Rome and Biblical Israel. Politicians were just as prone to disarming citizens in former times as they are today. The ancient despots stripped your weapons and there you stood- a slave. The moderns put you to sleep in lukewarm water while gradually turning up the heat.
Dave Workman’s piece about sixty-five House Democrats that oppose renewal of the AWB:
Gun prohibitionists are crowing that a federal judge on March 19 blocked a rule change allowing concealed carry in national parks.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Bill Clinton appointee, issued a preliminary injunction that the National Rifle Association says it will quickly appeal.
An apparently giddy Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, was quoted by the Associated Press noting, “We’re happy that this headlong rush to push more guns into more places has been slowed.”
Darned right he’s happy, but this has nothing to do with public safety or even the lengthy process under which the rule was adopted late last year. Contrary to what the Brady camp and its allies who sued to stop this rule are claiming, this change was not “sudden” or a “last minute bone” thrown to the evil “gun lobby.” This process took a couple of years and went through an extended public comment period last year, and the gun ban lobby knows it. Public comments were being taken as far back as last spring, and everyone had a chance to weigh in, and was even extended an additional 30 days at the request of opponents like Kurt Repanshek.
But, as it has now occurred to 65 Democrat members of the House of Representatives, the gun ban lobby is pretty good at stretching a falsehood (truth has nothing to do with it!). Read this letter in pdf form, courtesy the National Rifle Association.
‘The gun control community has intentionally misled many Americans…’
See Dave Kopel’s article for more about threat of “assault weapons” to police officers.
In February, 2008, the Dallas Morning News reported that CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico and Nuevo Laredo were competing for the tiltle of bloodiest border city.
In the first two months of 2008, Juárez had 72 murders – most of them tied to the drug cartels. They are the result of a bloody fight for control of drug distribution routes to U.S. cities, including several cities in the State of Washington.
On June 6, 2009, a shoot-out that erupted in Acapulco left 18 dead. According to the LA Times, a war occurred when army officials received an anonymous tip and arriving troops came under fire at a house in the western section of Acapulco:
“The army said 16 gunmen and two soldiers died during the gunfight. Some news media reports said the gunmen belonged to the Beltran Leyva drug-trafficking gang, based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, but they could not be immediately confirmed.
Soldiers later recovered 49 rifles and handguns, 13 grenades and two grenade launchers, the army said. The cache held more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition.”
Every authority on the subject has been predicting that such violence is about to cross the border into the U.S. About the time that Mexican officials discovered eight bodies buried at a Juárez warehouse, an El Paso Times/News Channel 9 poll showed that 64 percent of El Paso residents feared that Juárez violence would spill into the U.S. The two cities, just across the Rio Grande from each other, have close cultural ties.
In Nuevo Laredo, the cartels have killed at least one journalist, a city council member and a police chief on the job just seven hours before he was gunned down. Additionally, the cartels had created a list of police officers marked for death. Many of the LEOs on the list have already been killed along with scores of other officers that were not on the list.
According to the Dallas Morning News articles, the Nuevo Laredo news media “self-censor” much of the news they report about the cartels because of fear that more journalists will be assassinated. “We’re reporting maybe 15 percent of what’s happening in our city,” said Alfredo Quijano, editor of the newspaper, whose building has received bomb threats. The fact that reporters in Mexico only reporting body counts and refuse to investigate official corruption that enables the cartels raises the issue of whether U.S. news media are also intimidated.
“We’re seeing the importation of Nuevo Laredo-style violence being unleashed to take control of this important gateway,” said a senior U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The … magnitude, the brutality, the type of violence, this is what we now call Nuevo Laredo-style. It’s a proven strategy aimed at intimidating the public, law enforcement, the media.”
If Laredo style intimidation is coming to King County, our American gun culture may be the best barrier to prevent the epidemic of murder, kidnapping and robbery that all the authorities have predicted will surge across the border. According to a recent CNN story, “the cartel’s tentacles and those of its chief rival, the Gulf cartel, already reach across the border and into metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Seattle, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; and Charlotte, North Carolina.”
In March, 2009, thirty-two-year-old Alfonso Ibanez-Martinez, a Mexican national operating near Tacoma, was convicted of conspiracy to distribute heroin. The Seattle DEA says Ibanez-Martinez has ties to the drug community in Michoacan, Mexico. Other major cartels like the Sinoloa and Tijuana also funnel drugs up I-5 into Seattle – a major distribution point before they head east to states like Wisconsin, Tennessee and North Carolina, according to King5.com.
CNN cited DEA Agent Joseph Arabit’s March, 2009 testimony before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. “No other country in the world has a greater impact on the drug situation in the United States than Mexico does,” said Arabit, who heads the DEA’s office in this year’s border hot spot, El Paso, Texas. CNN’s map pinpointing drug traffic by cartel indicates that all the major Mexican cartels operate in and around Seattle and King County, including Renton, Federal Way & Bellevue. See where Mexican cartels are in the U.S.
The Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center reported in December, 2008 that Mexican drug traffickers can be found in more than 230 U.S. cities.
Once again, drug war casualties are mounting on the Mexican side at a record pace in 2009 – more than 1,000 during the first three months of the year, Arabit said. See who the key players are » Since the same cartels are competing for turf in the Seattle area, violence seems inevitable.
Law enforcement officials and analysts told CNN that “it is only a matter of time before innocent people on the U.S. side get caught in the cartel crossfire.”
Although the cartels previously tried to avoid direct confrontation with U.S. law enforcement, Sinaloa cartel leader Guzman’s instructed his soldiers to shoot-to-kill- U.S. law enforcement officials included according to Los Angeles Times sources and intelligence memos.
Additionally, Stratfor, a Texas-based security consulting firm that helped to research Guzman and researches security risks, has been warning that the recent trend of cartel related kidnappings in Phoenix and Tucson will soon spread out to other localities within the U.S. and that the kidnapping business will not just continue targeting cartel members and their families.
Some neighborhoods in Phoenix have now become warehouses where the cartels hold illegal immigrants for ransom money. The economics of the “global market place” militate in favor of increased diversification The cartels have already begun to recognize the prospect of increasing revenue by kidnapping Americans.
Highways move the drugs. Nuevo Laredo is close to the Interstate 35 corridor, and Juarez has easy access to I-10, a major east-west interstate. I-25 runs north to Denver, Colorado. Tijuana is also conveniently near I-10 and I-5, which heads north all the way to the Canadian border via Seattle and Tacoma.
The violence involves beheadings, gun battles like the recent firefight in Acapulco. Mass graves and arms caches have been discovered and police and public officials have been gunned down in broad daylight. Recruitment banners in the streets display the open contempt that enforcers have for the authorities.
“From what we’ve seen, the Zetas have taken over the Gulf cartel,” analyst Stewart said. “In violent times, soldiers tend to rise to the top.” These soldiers are incredibly well-armed, police learned after a November raid that resulted in the arrest of top Zeta lieutenant Jaime “Hummer” Gonzalez Duran.
It was the largest weapons seizure in Mexican history – 540 rifles, including AK-47s; 287 grenades; two rocket launchers; and 500,000 rounds of ammunition.
Many of the Zetas are former Federales that walked away from their units taking their weapons with them. Even small towns are being taken over by groups like MS-13, an international network that uses the machete in order to increase brand recognition for the violent force which is the gang’s stock in trade.
There have also been reports that gangs have smuggled Middle Eastern terrorists across the border and that the cartels are menacing U.S. law enforcement at the border.
If the reports are true that the cartels and gangs like MS-13 are about to expand their operations into kidnapping for ransom and other activities, the U.S. population should be prepared.
PermalinkBut there is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties; it tells the state to let people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order.
Bowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616 (7th Cir.1982)
