City Hall to Get Metal Detectors

Call him prescient; call him paranoid. Either way, City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. was right.

During a debate Wednesday over security at City Hall, the councilman said he knew exactly how the news media would spin the story.

He predicted that today’s accounts of the lawmakers’ 8-2 vote would read: The Los Angeles City Council took a bold step toward protecting the public Wednesday by deciding to protect itself first.

“I know that’s going to be the article,” Svorinich said.

In this paper, yes; in others, maybe.

But observers were bound to record Svorinich’s anxiety over the council’s decision to install two metal detectors to screen the employee and public entrance to the City Council chambers. At the same time, they plan to install special key card locks at the chambers’ rear entrance, which is used mostly by lawmakers, their staffs and city department brass. Left unclear is whether reporters--or even the mayor’s staff--will receive those key cards as well.

But although Svorinich appeared at least a little worried about the media reaction, Councilman Mike Hernandez was not the least bit concerned. “I could care less what the media say,” he said. Metal detectors are also used in the courthouses, and guards watch over LAPD headquarters, he added.

“I’m sorry that’s the state of affairs today,” Hernandez said.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg disagreed with her colleagues, saying that metal detectors will make it even more difficult for the public to attend council meetings. Of course, her own anxieties were expressed to an audience of about a dozen people, most of whom work at City Hall.

The unintended consequences of forcing people to walk through a metal detector, she said, “will be that people feel less connected and more alienated from us.”

Fellow lawmaker Cindy Miscikowski also voted against the security proposals but for different reasons: She didn’t think they went far enough. She said that the proposal wasn’t comprehensive and that it only addressed a small set of security issues. Besides, she said, the plan might just give the public the wrong idea--a la Svorinich’s concerns.

The renewed focus on security comes nearly a year after a gunman wounded six at Riverside City Hall.

Although Los Angeles’ General Services Department initially recommended much more security for its City Hall, including parking restrictions, lawmakers agreed only to a scaled-down plan that will cost about $80,000 a year. (Security guards will have to monitor those metal detectors.)

As a department official told the council: “This [building] is a target.”

But one City Hall aide had a good idea: Scrap the metal detectors and remove the “Officials Only” sign on the elevators so people won’t know exactly how the politicians get to their offices.

Actually, given the elevators’ speed, it’s a wonder they make it anywhere. But that’s another story.