Keeping Our Capitols Secure.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

Statehouses need to be as open to the people as possible as well as safe places to work.

To outsiders it may have seemed like a harmless prank when an environmental activist pushed a cream pie into the face of Minnesota Senator Carol Flynn just outside the Senate chamber, but the staff of the state's Capitol Complex Security Division weren't laughing.

They were, in fact, incensed.

"It was an outrage," says Sergeant Mike Parker with the statehouse's security office. "There was nothing funny about it. It was a breach of security and an unwarranted attack on a member of the Legislature."

A county judge agreed. Several months after the attack, Robert Greenberg was sentenced to 20 days in jail even after his attorney argued that the pie-throwing incident was not done maliciously. "Mr. Greenberg intended to make a statement about her abuse of power," the attorney said, referring to Flynn's refusal to hear a bill favored by environmentalists who were opposed to the expansion of a major highway in Minneapolis.

While Greenberg's attack did nothing to stop the highway bill from eventually becoming law, it did help prompt lawmakers to contemplate the nature of their security.

"I think it was one of those things that got a lot of people thinking," Parker observed. "The members, the governor and the staff should feel safe when they are working here. If they're not, then we're doing something wrong."

Fuel was added to the fire by a series of threats made against the state's controversial governor, Jesse Ventura, who has emerged as a lightning rod for attacks.

Ventura, during his first 14 months in office, received at least 30 threats and nearly 40 harassing communications, more than twice the number of his predecessor, according to the state's Capitol Security Division.

One man, who left nine messages last February threatening both Ventura and his children with violence, was sentenced to 10 days in jail on a misdemeanor charge of harassing communications.

For his part, Ventura seems nonplussed, telling reporters that hardly a week goes by when someone doesn't threaten him.

"It goes with the territory," he remarked.

But for Minnesota Senator Randy Kelly and Representative Rich Stanek, that territory has become far too dangerous. In the last legislative session they proposed two bills designed to upgrade security at the statehouse, which is currently handled by some 48 security guards. The guards are noncommissioned, which means they do not carry guns on a regular basis, nor do they have other police powers.

Kelly wanted to add four sworn, (commissioned) officers to the division, while Stanken aimed to create a separate police force devoted to protecting the statehouse alone.

"We have a serious security problem here, and this is a very modest proposal," Kelly told members of the Senate Governmental Operations Committee. His bill, however, was reduced to adding just four state troopers, at a cost of $400,000, to the governor's security detail of 11, instead of the Capitol force.

But from Parker's perspective, the debate was a good thing.

"I think it brought out concerns that a lot of us have about security," the sergeant reflects. "You want to keep the statehouses as open to the people as possible. But it is also a dangerous world out there, and you can't pretend to ignore that."

AS THE WORLD TURNS

That world repeatedly intrudes. Last year security was tightened after racist graffiti was painted inside the Washington state capitol building in Olympia. During that same week, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were worried about possible terrorist groups coming across the Canadian border to cause trouble on the Millennial New Year's Eve.

Two weeks before that, Colorado state troopers forcibly removed a drunken man who tried to bite them after screaming at portraits of Presidents Lincoln and Carter in the Capitol rotunda. Only days before that, the legislature agreed to...