By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
A confidential U.S. Marshals’ security assessment for the Broward County Courthouse exposed numerous weaknesses in the building’s security system four years before last week’s scandalous escape of a 21-year-old murder suspect.
The assessment included several recommendations that, if implemented, may well have prevented Dayonte Resiles’ desperate dash out of Judge Raag Singhal’s courtroom, down four flights of stairs and out a fire emergency door to short-lived freedom.
Resiles, who escaped one week ago, was captured Wednesday without incident at a West Palm Beach motel and returned to Broward. Seven people have been charged with aiding in the escape of Resiles, who is accused of stabbing to death Jill Halliburton Su in her Davie home in 2014.
Resiles’ arrest, however, did little to ease anxiety about courthouse security.
“Here’s the bottom line, and it’s something we’ve been talking about for years and clearly predates Sheriff [Scott] Israel. We do not have sufficient staffing from the sheriff’s department in this courthouse,” Broward Chief Judge Peter Weinstein said Thursday.
“We constantly hear from the county, ‘We give the sheriff sufficient funding to run the department.’ The sheriff says, ‘I don’t have enough manpower.’ And we’re the people in the middle,” said Weinstein.
The U.S. Marshals’ assessment, a copy of which was obtained by the Florida Bulldog, similarly noted the need for more law enforcement personnel in both the lobby screening station and courtrooms.
“There is not an armed security officer assigned to each courtroom, instead, there are civilian court deputies. Very few of the courtrooms have armed security officers,” says the assessment. “On an average day, the central courthouse has approximately 14 law enforcement officers working in the building. This building has 54 judges and 11 magistrates. In-custody defendants are ‘dropped-off’ in courtrooms with no law enforcement personnel present.”
The recommendation: “one court deputy for every judge. Court deputies should be armed and trained by BSO and should have access to a duress alarm. Two law enforcement officers for in-custody defendants,” with an additional officer for each additional defendant.
Israel tweaks courthouse security
On Monday, Sheriff Israel moved the Broward Sheriff’s Office part-way toward the Marshals’ recommendations. From now on, he said, maximum-security inmates appearing in court would have a sworn deputy with them at all times, not just a civilian bailiff. A detention deputy who escorts the prisoner to court “will only release custody once an armed deputy is present,” the sheriff said in a statement.
Israel did not address the report’s call for shielding judges with bulletproof glass or improving the knee wall and gate that now partially separates the courtroom gallery areas from public seating area and does not extend the width of the courtroom.
WPLG Local 10 reported Monday that Israel did not accept $2.6 million offered by the county last year to beef up courthouse security. The offer, said to be in writing, would have doubled the number of armed courthouse deputies from 29 to 58 and also allowed the sheriff to “guarantee that every high-risk inmate like Resiles could be accompanied by at least one armed deputy in addition to a bailiff,” the television station reported.
BSO spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright responded Thursday: “We support having an armed deputy (plus additional BSO personnel) in every critical courtroom in the courthouse, but the county has not approved additional staffing or funding to provide this level of coverage.”
Coleman-Wright also provided a Wednesday memo written to the County Commission by BSO General Counsel Ron Gunzburger. It accuses county administrators of holding the $2.6 million “hostage until the sheriff signs a global memo of understanding (MOU)” for the entire judicial complex that would build on existing staffing levels that are “woefully inadequate,” locking in future personnel shortfalls.
“If the sheriff would sign the proffered MOU, he would be agreeing to continue inadequate and unsafe staffing for the greatly expanded size of the entire complex…The sheriff is unwilling to sign this deeply flawed agreement,” the memo says.
Assistant County Administrator Alphonso Jefferson disputed that account. He said the MOU would ensure that dollars allocated by the county specifically for courthouse security would actually be spent by the sheriff on courthouse security, and not be diverted to the sheriff’s other priorities.
“Essentially, we want to make sure the money is earmarked for courthouse security,” said Jefferson. “You don’t want to be back with the same issue down the road.”
BSO and Broward’s judiciary asked the Marshals’ Office to evaluate security because of their expertise in arranging security for federal courthouses. The evaluation, completed in July 2012, was done after several fleeing defendants had highlighted courthouse security deficiencies.
“What report?”
According to Jefferson, however, the security assessment was done without the county’s knowledge. He said county officials didn’t learn about it until November 2013. “It was at a meeting with BSO and the judiciary when we heard about the report. We said, ‘What report?’”
The county soon put together a task force of all the players, including the court administrator’s office. He said that as a result, the county has been spending $1.8 million to address a number of recommendations – for example, installing security cameras and improving security at entry screening areas in the East Wing and the North Tower that houses felony courtrooms
The Marshal’s security review looked at a wide variety of areas from outside perimeter security to courtrooms and chambers, public area and access control and law enforcement staffing and technology.
“Security is of fundamental importance to every court because the impartial and independent application of the law may be threatened by intrusion, disruption, intimidation, force, theft, malicious and environmental disaster,” says the assessment. “If a court cannot operate with a high degree of security, its legitimacy has the potential to be undermined.”
Other recommendations included the installation of numerous closed circuit television cameras inside and outside the courthouse, door and window alarms, additional barriers to prevent vehicle intrusion, better external lighting and better monitoring of nighttime cleaning crews.
The marshals’ assessment team, while acknowledging that implementing its recommendations would be costly, emphasized “that an acceptable level of security will only be reached when all of the measures at the best practice level are incorporated… Care should be taken to prioritize and implement as many of the recommendations as quickly as possible.”
The review did not estimate costs, but some were simple and relatively inexpensive. For example, report notes that in many courtrooms the door leading to a judge’s chambers had the lock on the courtroom side of the door.
“This means that if someone was chasing the judge and the judge runs into chambers, the judge has no way of locking the door. This also means that prior to court commencing, anyone could turn the lock and have access to chambers,” says the report, which recommended reversing the locks, with the deadbolt on the chambers’ side.
Many of the reports’ recommendations have not been adopted. Chief Judge Weinstein said, however, that many would be incorporated into the new, $250-million high-rise courthouse building that remains unfinished. The new courthouse was supposed to open last year, but is now expected to open in October, said Weinstein.
After the new courthouse opens, the old 10-story courthouse will be demolished and a plaza and new parking facility will be installed. The more modern felony wing on the east side of the courthouse will remain, and be connected by walkways to the new 20-story courthouse.
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