Playing Safe : County Supervisors to Install Metal Detectors, Glass Shield

Soon, attending a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting will be a little like catching a plane--you’ll have to pass through a metal detector first.

Installation of a metal detector is part of a plan to beef up security in the board’s cavernous hearing room, county officials said Tuesday.

Also planned is the installation of laminated glass above the railing that separates the five supervisors and county staff from the public.

Larry Monteilh, the board’s executive officer, said the measures grew out of a security review his office began a year and a half ago and were not related to any recent events.

During a noisy demonstration that briefly disrupted a Board of Supervisors meeting last month, members of the militant AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power sat down on the floor and repeatedly shouted, “Stop AIDS!” About 15 protesters were arrested by two dozen sheriff’s deputies who had been alerted before the demonstration.

“Every time we have large gathering in the board room, it heightens concern for the supervisors’ safety,” Monteilh said. “There isn’t any way to make sure that somebody doesn’t have a firearm other than to make them come through a (metal) detector.”

The glass wall is intended to prevent a recurrence of a 1953 incident in which an irate citizen jumped the railing in the board’s former quarters and punched then-Supervisor Raymond Darby in the face. Darby died later that day of a brain hemorrhage.

Currently, a uniformed sheriff’s deputy stands guard over supervisors’ meetings. A sign posted at the entrance to the board room, which seats more than 700 people, advises visitors that they are subject to search. The security plan calls for stationing four more guards at entrances.

The supervisors won’t be the first in California to require citizens to pass through metal detectors before participating in their government’s business. Such a device was installed at San Francisco City Hall after Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed by just-resigned Supervisor Dan White in 1978. Some court buildings in Los Angeles County also have metal detectors.

The Los Angeles City Council once considered getting metal detectors for its elegant, wood-paneled chambers but rejected them as too restrictive, said Los Angeles Police Officer Anthony Radavich, one of the council’s two sergeants-at-arms.

Monteilh said he consulted the supervisors privately before proceeding with the security plan, which will cost about $50,000. The plan became public when a county official advised reporters Tuesday that they would soon have to begin wearing press credentials to gain access to the seats near the supervisors.

Monteilh said additional security measures are planned but declined to say what they are.