{"id":14279,"date":"2019-02-27T13:06:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T18:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=14279"},"modified":"2019-02-27T13:06:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T18:06:16","slug":"brick-council-planning-zoning-board-meetings-will-have-metal-detectors-security-screening-from-now-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2019\/02\/brick-council-planning-zoning-board-meetings-will-have-metal-detectors-security-screening-from-now-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Council, Planning, Zoning Board Meetings Will Have Metal Detectors, Security Screening From Now On"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A Garrett metal detector. (Photo: Garrett)<\/p><\/div>\n

After a review of security procedures, meeting of the Brick Township council, planning board of Board of Adjustment (also known as the zoning board) will require attendees to go through a metal detector and security screening table prior to entering the meeting room, and the police presence at the meetings will increase slightly.<\/p>\n

The practice was first employed at Tuesday night\u2019s council meeting. Many attendees thought that the practice was being utilized because a controversial topic \u2013 the prohibition of recreational marijuana sales \u2013 was being discussed, however the introduction of the cannabis ordinance coincidentally occurred the same night the new procedures were to be put in place, said Township Administrator Joanne Bergin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been doing courtroom training and all kinds of security assessments for our municipal building and this was something we were going forward with anyway,\u201d Bergin told Shorebeat on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In recent months, township officials have held a number of sessions with law enforcement on threats to the safety of officials, employees and members of the general public at meetings. When the Brick meeting room is used for court proceedings, a metal detector is used and all those entering the room are subject to a possible security screening of their bags. But the same practice was never employed for public government meetings. Now, the courtroom procedure will be used for council, planning and zoning meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be one police officer in the council chambers and there are [special officers] outside doing the screening,\u201d explained Bergin.<\/p>\n

At Tuesday night\u2019s meeting, an extra officer came into the room to ask about the township\u2019s policy on the use of marijuana on township property, given the subject matter of the meeting. Several individuals were smoking marijuana outside the municipal building, though almost all of them had identified themselves as legal medical marijuana patients during the public portion of the meeting.<\/p>\n

Cannabis issued aside, the new policy comes after security at public meetings was deemed \u201cwoefully inadequate,\u201d Bergin said. Indeed, in the past several years, viral videos have shown violent confrontations at public meetings across the country, including a disturbing shooting at a school board meeting<\/a> in Florida and a council meeting in Minnesota<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that in ever public building where something like this has occurred, we have seen nationally that it\u2019s very random and it\u2019s always in a town where people think, \u2018it\u2019s not going to happen here,'\u201d said Bergin. \u201cWe have a responsibility to protect our residents just as we do to protect ourselves.\u00a0We need to be secure, we need to be diligent and we need to be trained.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public facility are \u201cvulnerable targets,\u201d Bergin explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur schools, our municipal buildings, every level of the workplace should have proper protections in place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a review of security procedures, meeting of the Brick Township council, planning board of Board of Adjustment (also known as the zoning board) will require attendees to go through a metal detector and security screening table prior to entering the meeting room, and the police presence at the meetings will increase slightly. The practice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,3626,3627,154],"class_list":["post-14279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-metal-detector","tag-municipal-building","tag-township-council"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/metal_detect.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-3Ij","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}