For now, the metal detectors have returned to the Colorado Capitol Building. All the exterior doors are locked, except for the one with the metal detector. It’s anyone’s guess when, if ever, the usual openness will return to the seat of state government.
The heightened security and anxiety are the result of a bizarre episode involving one disturbed man. He ended up dead on the marble floor outside the governor’s temporary office, shot by a state patrolman.
The four gunshots reverberated loudly through the hard, polished surfaces of the old place, disturbing the peace and stirring up fears, anger and an urge to do something to make sure it never happens again.
A metal detector is not a wholly satisfactory response, but its effect is as much to reassure as to prevent. It’s rather like closing the barn door after the horse has run amok. But something had to be done, if only to show that the people in charge understand things are different now. At least for a while.
The Capitol Building in summertime is usually a peaceful place. The legislators and the lobbyists are gone. There are tourists, of course, and more of them in the summer than in the winter, but there are not as many throngs of school kids on field trips.
The rose onyx walls and the gray marble floors are dusted and mopped. The brass rails are polished to a high luster, with each day’s smudgy handprints rubbed away.
It’s almost a lonely place. In summers past, a group of quilters used to come by late in the season and hang colorful, intricate quilts from the cornices overhead. They lent a hush to the entire building, muffling the clattering and chattering of tourists – the tourist racket, if you will. This year the quilts went up earlier, while the legislators were still in session.
Summer hush or in-session hubbub, the atmosphere at the Capitol always has been more welcoming than at the Denver City and County Building. One difference was the metal detectors.
Most state capitol buildings do not use metal detectors anymore. The Colorado Capitol had a metal detector, and only one public entrance, from the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks until sometime before the 2003 legislative session. The dome didn’t reopen until just last spring.
The City and County Building seems always to have had screening stations. Compared with the Capitol, hardly any tourists visit City Hall. It doesn’t seem as friendly, stately or well-maintained.
Don’t blame City Hall, though. It has courtrooms, and where there are courtrooms, there are criminals. And where there are criminals, there are their shady and unpredictable cronies and enemies – people known for sometimes carrying weapons, and for not following the rules.
The federal buildings downtown, and their courtrooms, are not big tourist draws either. If anything, they’re even more intimidating than City Hall.
It needs to be said that in last week’s Capitol shooting, most procedures worked as they should. The delusional man who called himself the “emperor” purchased his handgun legally. He no doubt showed up on Capitol surveillance cameras. There was ample security, including the officer who fired the fatal shots. A magnetometer would have detected the weapons the man carried, but how much more security is necessary? Or wise? No one ever had been shot to death in the Capitol. It may never happen again.
Eventually things will return to normal, whatever that is. In the meantime (and probably forever, come to think of it), two things must be guarded against: dangerous invaders (rare) and overreacting public officials (not so rare).
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
