Tuesday, March 15, 2005, 8:23am
Tuesday, March 15, 2005, 8:23am
Into West Natick newsprint at hand covers the details of a courthouse shooting in Atlanta where a defendant by the name of Brian Nichols overpowered his guard – a 5-foot tall middle-aged women – took her gun, shot her dead and then roamed the courthouse until he found and killed a judge and court reporter. In essence the story today describes how lax security was the underlying cause – a lack of appreciation for the risks to be more exact – and talk now fills the airwaves and internet calling for a vast courtroom security funding increase.
These are similar to calls after the 9/11 attacks resulting in billions poured into airport screening. For the most part the air traffic system is just about the safest possible given conflicting agendas — airlines trying to make a buck and politicians trying to cover their collective butt without shredding the Constitution too noticeably. Are we really any safer? That is not a question often asked for all sorts of reasons.
To our detriment humanity has this nasty habit of overacting to a given danger — desperately hoping to see a specific Band-Aid fully patching a particularly alarming breach. Yet we are only lying to ourselves in all of this. A perceived danger is rarely as great as it seems and our reaction hardly more than window-dressing stealing resources from more substantial ways we could improve our personal security.
It may be an impossible task for human nature to assess and measure each risk in context, figure out which are the most threatening and prioritize our efforts so we apply our actions where they’ll do the most good. Mostly instead we focus on the latest threat. Perhaps this stems from a lack of imagination. Yet more likely this approach is ingrained as a matter of instinct. The trains are safe not because the early designers ginned up a comprehensive risk analysis. Trains are safe because of specific reactions to thousands of wrecks over the last 170 years. We’ve run through the coop like Chicken Little so often that we finally understand most of the little things that can go wrong with a railroad and made adjustments accordingly. We may not see the tapestry of events leading to wars very clearly, but in many smaller day-to-day circumstances we are presented with the same dangers often enough not have many excuses.
What is most riling is how train wrecks and courthouse shootings can happen even when we understand these dangers. It is one thing when a new type of disaster happens like a manhole cover suddenly shooting out of the street or an entirely unexpected twist like airplanes crashing into buildings on purpose. We marvel. We shake our heads. But we don’t have that sickening feeling that we already knew what to expect and simply failed to act.
Far more often the risk is entirely obvious and nothing is done to prepare or act on plans already in place, and sometimes I wonder if most ‘risks’ are nothing more than routine dangers we humans are too cheap or pompous or oblivious to notice. The greatest dangers are not particularly exotic. Mostly they are like my walks through Boston in the rush hour. I’m far more likely to die from a bus than from a terrorist bomb. Yet in this post 9/11 world the bus receives far less attention. And this week, with recent murders still freshly in the news, talk has converged on fortifying thousands of courtrooms.
Instead of a massive overreaction, perhaps a simple procedural change might do the trick. How about shackling dangerous prisoners? …or having guards of at least equal size and strength accompanying each prisoner? …or working a checklist so that nothing of the routine procedure is missed?
Nothing much will really happen here, except maybe as a back-burner priority for two reasons:
Powerful institutions hog resources, and if there is money to spend it will be spent on fortresses and green zones focused on protecting wealth, not the personal safety of ordinary people. Or more to the point — those most able to afford improved security will spend that money on themselves, not on courthouses.
The second reason is known as the disaster of the month syndrome. Before effort is expended on courthouse security, some other crisis will come along to divert the river of public fear. It takes and even like 9/11 to instigate major changes. A simple courthouse shooting isn’t big enough news to outlast the constant drone of other disasters. As old fashion news people once said of the news, “God provides.” In other words, few days pass without something new to report.
If there are enough train wrecks or plane crashes or prescription drug poisonings, and if these happen repeatedly to the point where even a first-grader sees a problem, then permanent standards often become ingrained as a matter of inertia. A one time even rarely has the staying power.
In the end, even learning a lesson does not lead naturally to action on that lesson, so there will always be security breaches and considerable squawking thereafter with far less ever done about it.
“South Station next”
Before I forget, I had a chance to record the information etched on these dingy glass windows…
FRA TYPE I &II
TUFFAK {TRADEMAKE SYMNBOL} CM-2
ROMM AND HASS CO. >.459 {DEGREE SYMBOL}
ALMAC, BRLYN. NY
It seems that the “FRA” refers to the Federal Railway Administration and “Tuffak” is a trade name for clear high-speed projectile impact-resistance polycarbonate plastic. (So it seems these windows aren’t float-glass after all — per previous pontifications on the subject).
The CM-2 designation refers to the protective coating – and by way of ongoing personal observation never designed for 15 years of industrial cleaning.
