Check it at the door.
It’s a familiar phrase to anyone who has ever carried a gun, but Red Bank means it when it comes to government meetings.
The politically charged city is the only one in Hamilton County to make residents walk through a metal detector before business begins.
The device “kills two birds with one stone,” City Manager Chris Dorsey said, since the Red Bank’s City Commission chamber doubles as a courtroom, where “weapons of any kind” are unwelcome.
“We’re not doing full-body scans or anything like that,” Dorsey said. “I’m surprised the other governments around here don’t have a metal detector.”
Besides Red Bank, only members of the Hamilton County Commission, housed inside the county courts building, are assured that residents have been checked before meetings. Chairman Larry Henry said he feels “a lot better with it being there.”
“Not to say anyone would do anything drastic, but a lot of issues concern a lot of people, and some of them take it personally,” he said.
Red Bank bought its metal detector nearly three years ago, but nothing threatening has ever happened before a meeting and no weapons have ever been found, city records show.
When something in someone’s pocket sets off the metal detector, a sharp beep indicates potential trouble. Red Bank police Sgt. Michael Ray, who mans the metal detector, usually finds coins or keys when he checks further with two handheld screening wands.
“I like when that happens,” an elderly woman laughed at a recent commission meeting, declining to give her name.
Red Bank officials said they couldn’t recall any complaints about the screenings.
Other cities
Courthouses throughout the area routinely screen for weapons, making sure the accused and victims alike are coming in clean.
But other municipal governments – Chattanooga, East Ridge, Signal Mountain, Soddy-Daisy, among others – have a minimal amount of police presence and do not use a metal detector.
“We have an [extra] officer attend when something may get contentious, but I think that’s happened twice since I’ve been here,” Signal Mountain Town Manager Honna Rogers said. “That said, I don’t think metal detectors are a bad idea.”
State law authorizes local governments to outlaw the possession of weapons in meetings conducted by any government entity.
Red Bank had already spent $300 on the handheld screening wands but, in April 2008, officials signed off on a $2,750 metal detector on the advice of Dorsey, who worked many years at Memphis City Hall, where government threats happened on a regular basis, he said.
City records show Red Bank paid for the screening device with money from the city’s drug fund, a ledger comprised of property and cash seized from busted narcotics deals. A police officer is paid to monitor the screening and wand as needed.
Lewis Card Jr., a Chattanooga resident and lifetime National Rifle Association member, said a police presence is good, but a resident who’s “properly trained” in gun use could negate the need for a metal detector.
“A criminal will figure out a way of getting a gun in no matter what,” Card said. “A good deterrent is knowing you could get yourself killed by someone else in the room.”