Pens concealing knives, necklace pendants concealing blades, wallets secured with foot-long chains, your everyday pocket knife, and even grandmother’s knitting needles — these are among the items Island County Courthouse security scanners keep their eyes and intuition honed to detect.

Bill Jones, account manager for Olympic Security, the organization which provides the security training and guards for the courthouse, said as security guards, their job is to keep everyone coming into the building safe and eliminate the possibility of anyone entering a court situation with the means to harm others involved in the court case.

“Basically, the job here is to screen anybody who is coming into the courthouse, to make sure that they’re not bringing in anything potentially dangerous or harmful,” Jones said.

Island County Budget Director Elaine Marlow said Island County installed the metal detector, x-ray scanner and employed Olympic Security guards, for the courthouse, in 2001. The security system cost the county $22,957.68 to install, and the employment of the security guards cost the county approximately $47,000 per year.

Jones said the necessity of these safety precautions and tools is apparent when community members take into account the fact that the courthouse handles many delicate situations, such as divorce cases, custody cases and criminal cases; as well as a variety of populations, including jail inmates, law officers, county workers and the general public.

“This is a court,” Jones said. “And in a court, there tends to be emotions, sometimes, and when people get emotional, they forget rules.”

He said he understands the emotion because a court is where issues are solved, decisions are made, people are sentenced and sometimes futures are decided. One half wins, and one half looses.

“You know, you just don’t want them to go in and do something they’re going to regret doing later,” he said.

Another thing he and other security guards have to take into account is that some people enter with the intent to harm.

“You get people here that are just bad people,” Jones said. “It is, after all, a court. Some people just don’t care.”

Island County Chief Deputy William F. Dennis said if anything were to happen at the security gate, help would arrive in seconds.

“They get Coupeville PD here and the Island County Sheriff’s Office — whoever happens to be running around, with a badge and a gun at the time, comes to the rescue,” he said.

Jones said the security guards work closely with the sheriff’s department, and if the sheriff’s department knows that someone coming in is a potential threat or has a record, they warn the security guards to watch for them and look them over more carefully.

“We tend to err on the side of caution,” Jones said.” If we suspect that there is something there, we look. We try not to be intrusive. We try to keep things light, but the end thing that we have to make sure of is that no one gets in with anything.”

Jones said if he was going to make a mistake, he would prefer it be the mistake of searching too exhaustively than let someone slip by with a weapon.

Corrections Deputy Derik Piechowski said with a courtroom full of people, things could get pretty ugly if someone got in with a weapon and plans to use it.

“As for my opinion,” he said. “It is like our first line of defense … for prisoners, the public and officers.”

The security guards have a booklet of shapes and objects to look for in the x-ray machine and ways that people have tried to conceal weapons or other harmful materials. It even shows guns made from cell phones and credit cards, and weapons concealed in walkers, canes, wheelchairs and jewelry. But they said these specialty items surpass what they see here at the Island County Courthouse.

“What we see here is mostly knives and chains – an occasional gun and a few other things,” Jones said.

Jones said the usual excuse is that the person with the weapon or other potentially harmful object says they forgot they had them. He recalled one time when they caught a woman trying to get into the courthouse with several kitchen knives down her boot, which she said she had forgotten were there.

“And we all keep knives down our boots,” said Eileen Roberts, another of the security guards, recalling the woman’s reply.

For the general public, however, Jones said he and the other security guards try to do their job as unobtrusively as possible.

“We try to keep it light out here and not get into people’s faces, and people generally cooperate. Very seldom do we have problems,” he said.

The trick, Jones said, is to use discretion, sensitivity and humor when searching through a person’s belongings and over them with the hand scanner.

“We try to keep it light,” Roberts said, nodding her head in agreement with Jones and echoing his comments for emphasis.

Jones and Roberts said they search everything from cell phones, cameras and recorders to baby strollers, car seats and kids’ pockets. They said they try to joke around with the kids and play “beam me up, Scotty” games, because it is hard enough on them, some of the things they have to be part of in the court room.

Chief Deputy Dennis said scans and searches make people feel as if their privacy is being invaded.

“So, you try to be as tactful as possible dealing with the public,” he said. “Some people find it highly offensive, and some people just go with the flow of things and see the necessity of it.”

For everyone involved, other than those scheming plans of how to get a weapon inside the courtroom, the Island County Courthouse security scanners are a healthy investment and those staffing them act as the public’s first line of defense and protection in courtroom situations.