http://www.gazette.net/stories/022206/montcou183416_31986.shtml
Until two security guards stood in the center of the Little Falls Library
and told patrons to stop viewing online porn sites, the county Department
of Homeland Security had kept a quiet watch over county-owned buildings.
Last year the county transferred about 58 security guards from the county’s
Department of Public Works and Transportation to the newly formed county
Department of Homeland Security.
Although the department’s name may invoke images of the federal Department
of Homeland Security created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
the job of the county guards is to patrol county buildings, direct traffic
and if necessary ask disruptive people to leave.
They wear uniforms with Homeland Security on them, but do not carry weapons
and do not have arrest powers.
In an incident reported Friday by The Washington Post, two county Homeland
Security guards entered the Little Falls Library in Bethesda on a routine
patrol on Feb. 8. When one of the guards saw a library patron at a computer
with pornography on the screen, he made a public announcement that such
sites were forbidden under the county’s sexual harassment policy, county
officials said.
But the guard was wrong.
Library patrons may view sexually explicit materials on the public access
computers, county officials said.
The guards ‘‘overstepped their authority,” county Chief Administrative
Officer Bruce F. Romer said in a statement.
‘‘When reminded by library staff that Montgomery County Public Library
policy supports the rights of patrons to view the materials of their
choice, the veteran officer continued to press his case — making the
situation worse,” Romer said.
The incident left county officials red-faced.
County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) called the guards’ actions ‘‘highly
inappropriate, unauthorized and in violation of county policy,” he said in
a statement. ‘‘What they did was wrong and I do not condone, in any way,
shape or form, their behavior.”
The county reprimanded and reassigned the guards, said county officials who
declined to name the guards citing confidentiality on personnel matters.
The county also ordered additional training for all Homeland Security
guards.
‘‘It is vitally important that as we increase security to protect our
homeland that we take extraordinary steps to protect the rights of our
residents,” Duncan said. ‘‘We have worked very hard to strike this balance,
but unfortunately the two security officials involved in last week’s
incident got it wrong.”
Additional training is intended to make sure the security
personnel ‘‘understand library policy and its consistency with residents’
First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution,” Romer said.
County Councilman Michael J. Knapp, who heads the council’s Homeland
Security Committee, said the guards faced ‘‘two or three competing
policies” and ‘‘they probably didn’t interpret them as well as we’d like.
It was probably a good learning experience for everybody.”
Until the incident at Little Falls Library, the council had heard only
praise about the Homeland Security guards for their professionalism, said
Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown, who was briefed by Romer on the incident.
A security officer 1’s salary begins at $31,771 a year and rises to $52,950
with 20 years of experience. The job’s minimum qualifications include a
high school education, a year’s experience at security work and CPR-
training certification. The county also requires the guards to have
the ‘‘ability to assess situations quickly and objectively and determine
proper course of action, handling situations and individuals firmly,
courteously and tactfully.”
For years, building guards had been part of the Department of Public Works
and Transportation’s Intelligence Coordination and Security force, Knapp
said.
‘‘The thinking was that our security guards didn’t fit well in any place,”
he said. ‘‘As we created the new Homeland Security department, one of the
things considered was the continuity of government and securing government
facilities and the county executive made a compelling case to put them
there,” Knapp said.
As part of the Department of Public Works and Transportation, the guards
were called to do building maintenance occasionally. Putting them under the
Department of Homeland Security, where they make up the bulk of the
department’s 72 employees, was intended to put more focus on their security
work, Knapp said.
Gordon A. Aoyagi, the county’s Homeland Security director, referred all
questions about the agency to Duncan spokesman David S. Weaver, who said no
further statements would be made.
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 14:57:42 -0500, Johnson, Tracy <Tracy.Johnson@MEAS-
SPEC.COM> wrote:
>I'm surprised the "County" has its own Homeland Security Department!
>
>Tracy Johnson
>Measurement Specialties, Inc.
>
>BT
>
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>NNNN
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>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Baier [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 2:28 PM
>> To: HP3000 List; Johnson, Tracy
>> Subject: OT: What will he do next?
>>
>>
>> Not him directly but because of him.
>>
>> http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?
>> qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzOTcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY4O
>> DM5MDImeXJpcnk
>> 3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2
>>
>> 'Sorry, you can't read that' Tuesday, Feb 21, 2006 By
>> LEONARD PITTS JR.
>>
>>
>> "The enemies of freedom will be defeated." -- President
>> George W. Bush, 2005 "We have met the enemy and he is us." --
>> Pogo, 1971
>>
>> THE FOLLOWING happened in the United States of America on
>> Feb. 9 of this
>> year.
>>
>> The scene is the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public
>> Library in Bethesda, Md. Business is going on as usual when
>> two men in
>> uniform stride into the main reading room and call for
>> attention. Then they
>> make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's
>> computers to
>> view Internet pornography.
>>
>> As people are absorbing this, one of the men challenges a
>> patron about a
>> Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At
>> this point, a
>> librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside. A
>> police officer is
>> summoned. The men leave. It turns out they are employees of
>> the county's
>> department of Homeland Security and were operating way outside their
>> authority.
>>
>> We are indebted to reporter Cameron W. Barr of The Washington
>> Post for the
>> account of this incident, which, I feel constrained to
>> repeat, did not
>> happen in China, Cuba or North Korea. Rather, it happened a
>> few days ago in
>> this country. Right here in freedom's land.
>>
>> There are those of us who'd say the country has become less
>> deserving of
>> that sobriquet in recent years. They would point as evidence to the
>> detention of U.S. citizens without charges, counsel or
>> recourse, to laws
>> empowering the government to check up on what you've been reading, to
>> revelations of illegal eavesdropping.
>>
>> And there are others who'd say, 'So what?' They're in the 51 percent,
>> according to a recent Los Angles Times/Bloomberg poll, who
>> say we should be
>> ready to give up our freedoms in exchange for security.
>>
>> Apparently, they are ignorant of what Benjamin Franklin said:
>> "They that
>> can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
>> safety deserve
>> neither liberty nor safety."
>>
>> Apparently, they're also unversed in something candidate Bush said in
>> 1999: "There ought to be limits to freedom." Mind you, this nugget of
>> wisdom wasn't dropped in a discussion of national security.
>> Rather, it was
>> the future president's reaction to a Web site that made fun of him.
>>
>> Seven years later, he's clearly getting his wish. It chills
>> me to know that
>> doesn't chill more of us.
>>
>> Indeed, of all the many things I cannot fathom about certain of my
>> countrymen and women, their ability to be sanguine at the threatened
>> abrogation of their rights is very near the top.
>>
>> The only way I can explain it is that freedom -- the right to
>> do, say,
>> think, go, "live" as you please -- is so ingrained in our
>> psyche, has been
>> such a part of us for so long, that some are literally unable
>> to imagine
>> life without it. They seem fundamentally unable to visualize how
>> drastically things would change without these freedoms they treat so
>> cavalierly, what it would be like to need government approval
>> to use the
>> Internet, buy a firearm, take a trip, watch a movie or read
>> these very
>> words.
>>
>> If that sounds alarmist, consider again the experience at
>> Little Falls,
>> where an agent of the government literally read over a man's
>> shoulder, Big
>> Brother like, and tried to prevent him from seeing what he
>> had chosen to
>> see.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but the fact that we are at war doesn't make that
>> OK. The fact
>> that we are panicked doesn't make it OK. The allegation that
>> the material
>> is unsavory doesn't make it OK.
>>
>> Look, freedom is a messy business. It is also a risky
>> business. But it
>> means nothing if we surrender it at every hint of messiness and risk.
>> That's cowardly and it's un-American.
>>
>> You'd think we'd have learned that lesson after the Sedition
>> Act of 1918,
>> the excesses of Joseph McCarthy, the surveillance of Martin
>> Luther King.
>> But apparently the lesson requires constant re-learning. And
>> vigilance.
>>
>> So thank you to the Little Falls library for having the guts
>> to say, hell
>> no.
>>
>> Some things should never happen in freedom's land.
>>
>> Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for
>> commentary, writes
>> for The Miami Herald. Contact him at [log in to unmask],
>> or call toll- free at 888-251-4407. Send comments about this
>> article to [log in to unmask]
>>
>
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