PORT TOWNSEND – A petition with the signatures of 28 Jefferson County Courthouse staff members asking for increased security in the courthouse was delivered to the county commissioners during their meeting Tuesday.
The petition requested a single courthouse entrance fitted with a metal detector.
Dennis Pownall, senior residential appraiser with the county Assessor’s Office, circulated the petition throughout the offices in the courthouse and presented it to the commissioners.
The petition was in response to a Dec. 19 story in the Peninsula Daily News reporting that Joe D’Amico, president of Gardiner-based Security Services Northwest, had sent the commissioners a letter urging them to install a security system in the courthouse.
In the Dec. 14 letter, D’Amico wrote, “Your exposure is real, and the lack of attention to this matter is significant and potentially deadly.”
Commissioner David Sullivan, D-Cape George, was quoted in the story as saying: “My sense is that this is a very safe community. The cost of an increased level of security in one minuscule portion of the county [the courthouse] is not a high priority.”
Pownall said it was this statement that motivated him to start the petition.
