Vicksburg police are beefing up security at the department’s headquarters. A metal detector that was at the municipal courtroom door inside the Veto Street building is now at the front entrance.

“We positioned it where anyone entering would have to go through it,” Police Chief Walter Armstrong said, adding that several scuffles in the past four months could have been avoided with heavier security.

The most recent was outside, but near, the police department. On Sept. 2, 23-year-old U.S. Army veteran Torrance Rickanta Burnett held law enforcement at bay for about three hours near the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library, a block west of the department. Burnett had a gun and was threatening to kill himself. He had just left the courtroom inside the VPD, where he had been convicted and sentenced to counseling on a second domestic abuse charge.

Armstrong believes more security might have discouraged Burnett’s behavior.

“We realized, behind those instances, there’s a possibility that someone could bring a gun in,” said Armstrong, hired over the summer after the election of a new mayor, Paul Winfield.

At the Warren County Courthouse, located at Grove and Cherry streets, there is no stationary metal detector. Sheriff’s deputies patrol the hallways and greet visitors, but there are no plans for anything extra, said Sheriff Martin Pace.

“In any facility, you have the possibility of someone bringing in contraband,” said Pace, but there haven’t been any shake-ups that would warrant more security at the courthouse.

About four years ago, extra deputies were hired and, now, “each judge and each court has a certified deputy as a bailiff,” Pace said.

Across Grove Street, at the jail, officers have handheld metal detectors, and visitors must be “buzzed in” before entering.

That’s something Armstrong would like to see happen at the police department.

“I want people to be buzzed in or escorted once they’ve been buzzed in,” said Armstrong. “I want it to be where a code or fingerprint is used for external entrances except the front.”

New security measures, of course, depend on the availability of funding. The VPD’s budget allotment for the 2009-10 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, is $6,417,392.

“We’re inquiring about grants. We’re maybe looking at Homeland Security,” Armstrong said. “If we have to do it in our budget, we would have to do one door at a time.”

*

Contact Tish Butts at tbutts@vicksburgpost.com