The usual fine, he added, is $300 and loss of the weapon. “There are a lot of people whose statement is, ‘I’d rather be caught with it than without it, judge,’ ” said Judge Mackey.
#COMPTON COURTHOUSE TATTOO TRIAL#
The attorney claims he was not aware the gun was in his briefcase and is awaiting trial in Municipal Court. One of those booked was an attorney on his way to argue a motion who was caught with a pistol in his briefcase. Quite a few of those arrested are let go after a trip to police headquarters, but about three people a month are booked on weapons charges, said Police Department crime analyst Bobby McDowell. “But no one was cognizant of the number (being brought in).”īecause it is a crime to bring a firearm or a knife with a blade longer than four inches into a courthouse, Compton police said civilian guards who run the metal detector regularly make citizen’s arrests. ‘We had found (and) confiscated weapons from time to time during scuffles in the hallways,” he said. Al Mathews, who supervises security for half of the county’s Superior Courts, was one of those surprised at the numbers. The detector spots one or two guns a month and about 140 knives-down from 180 knives a month when it was introduced a little more than a year ago. “I believe that’s the general feeling of the attorneys who practice there.”īut the magnitude of the metal detector’s haul has stunned even veterans in law enforcement and provided a powerful argument for its use. “Why should we be subjected to that kind of thing when it doesn’t go on in other courthouses?” said Katie Murff Trotter, president of the South-Central Bar Assn. Private attorneys and visitors are sometimes irritated by having to line up to go through the detector.
We’d like orderly access by the general public without unduly harassing them.”Īlthough many people who work at the Compton courthouse approve of the metal detector, that may be in part because employees have their own entrance to the building and thus do not have to pass through the device. “We don’t want a fortress courthouse system in L.A. Swearinger, who heads his court’s countywide security committee. “We don’t want to over-respond” to security concerns, said Superior Court Judge Ronald E. Judges elsewhere in the county have been hesitant to follow Compton’s model, preferring a less obtrusive approach. These changes have made the Compton courthouse, located in an area that is infested with street gangs, the most security conscious of any of the 33 state courthouses in Los Angeles County.īut the security measures also have earned a pejorative nickname for the courthouse, located at 200 W.
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