Tipton’s food truck concert series at the Tipton County Courthouse is shown in this photo from July 23, 2020. Indiana’s courthouses face serious and costly security issues. Kelly Lafferty Gerber | CNHI News Indiana
TIPTON — The Tipton County Courthouse is easy to access. The historic limestone building’s three public entrances, all unmonitored, can be used by patrons to get to a court hearing, pay taxes or attend a meeting.
Commissioner Tracey Powell feels comfortable with that straightforward, unchecked public access.
“I feel safe there, myself at least,” he said.
But according to the Indiana Judicial Conference, such unchecked courthouse access is a major security issue.
In 2018, the committee made up of more than 40 judges approved an updated list of eight basic security standards for Indiana courthouses, including the standard that every entry point must be screened. Since most counties cannot afford multiple screeners, most courthouses should have a single entrance, the committee decided.
In 2019, the Indiana Supreme Court took those new minimum standards a step further by amending its rule regarding courthouse safety plans.
The justices no longer asked that counties give “due consideration” to the standards when developing their security strategies. Instead, the state’s high court established that courthouse safety plans must conform to the standards and must be submitted to the state every two years for review.
The deadline for counties to submit courthouse safety plans was set for January 2020.
Three years later, Tipton County still isn’t meeting the minimum standards and hasn’t submitted a security plan to the Indiana Office of Court Services.
The rural county with 15,300 residents is far from alone. Only 22 of Indiana’s 92 counties have submitted a security plan as required by the state, according to Dave Kuhnz, a staff attorney with the Supreme Court’s Office of Communication, Education and Outreach.
Counties failing to meet the requirement aren’t all sparsely populated like Tipton. They include counties that are home to some of Indiana’s largest cities, including Evansville (Vanderburgh County), Gary (Lake), Terre Haute (Vigo), Kokomo (Howard) and Anderson (Madison).
Although many larger counties haven’t submitted safety plans, nearly all of them meet the requirements set out in the state’s minimum security standards.
But that’s not the case for courthouses in smaller counties, which struggle to find the funding to hire more security officers, buy screening devices or upgrade security cameras.
UNFUNDED MANDATE?
That’s the case in Blackford County, which doesn’t have the manpower or equipment to screen entry points at its courthouse in Hartford City. With just 12,000 residents in the county, it’s nearly impossible to find the money for those kinds of projects, said Circuit Court Judge Brian Bade.
“I think a lot of people locally in Blackford County government are motivated to resolve the issue but feel like that financial hurdle literally makes it impossible,” he said.
DeKalb Superior Court 2 Judge Monte Brown agrees. In 2019, the county purchased a state-of-the-art screening device that cost around $125,000 — a major payout for the small county located just north of Fort Wayne.
The new device makes residents and court employees feel much safer, but the price tag for that kind of security measure is something many rural counties simply can’t afford, noted Brown, who serves on the Indiana Court Security Committee.
“For a small county, that’s a big deal when you have bridges and highways and that sort of thing that need replaced or fixed,” he said.
The Office of Court Services offers grant money to help counties pay for those upgrades, but that funding sometimes doesn’t go far because of the high price of security equipment.
Last year, the state awarded a total of $317,500 to 10 counties to fund courthouse security improvements, kiosks and wayfinding systems. In 2020, more than $437,000 was awarded to 13 counties, but that money was allowed to be used on expenses related to COVID-19. In 2019, 10 counties received a combined $275,000 in court reform grants.
All those award amounts could be used on things other than courthouse security, and how much actually went toward safety projects is not clear.
Still, the grant program has helped some counties make ends meet on security projects that have brought courthouses into compliance with the state’s minimum safety standards.
Blackford County has applied for grant funding this year, and it’s the only way the county can afford implementing new security measures, according to judge Bade, who also serves on the Indiana Court Security Committee.
State funding may help pay for new equipment, but it doesn’t cover hiring law enforcement officers to patrol courthouses or operate screening equipment, noted Tipton County Commissioner Powell. Paying for the salary and benefits of new employees is a permanent new expense, he explained, and that’s tough to fund with already uncomfortably tight budgets.
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.