WARREN — Security changes at county building entrances are under review of the sheriff’s office and commissioners to better welcome visitors.

Trumbull County commissioners held their weekly workshop Tuesday, during which commissioners Denny Malloy and Mauro Cantalamessa discussed amnesty box conditions with Maj. Tony Villanueva. The conversation between the officials specifically addressed some inconveniences of confiscating the public’s items at the doors.

“If we need to come up with a ticket system or something like that, I want to go that route,” Board President Denny Malloy said. “I don’t think we should be seizing tools off of people just because we have horrible parking here that they have to walk to.”

The commissioners mentioned that visitors having their items confiscated while entering county buildings, and in turn losing such items, “is bad for PR.”

Villanueva said a “quick discussion to come up with a gameplan” could provide the best course of action moving forward for plans to change the system.

“If you guys put it in writing, we’ll make it happen,” Villanueva said.

“I was under the impression that you guys were doing that anyway,” Cantalamessa said. “I didn’t know that you were actually taking them and actually confiscating them.”

Malloy continued, “And all of the sudden they hate the sheriff, the commissioners and government and it’s not friendly. It’s just bad, I mean people aren’t intentionally trying to finagle knives into the building.”

Usually, the group said, people will try to place their unallowed items under bushes or bury them.

“The issue we ran into is anytime a deputy takes anything off of somebody, and has to return it back, there has to be a chain of custody at that point,” Villanueva said. “So, the amnesty box was the best route to go, because it’s a locked box. We give them the option of ‘Hey, if you want to take it back to your car, you’re more than welcome to.’ But like you said, parking is horrible sometimes, and they’re walking too far.”

Bill Danzo, assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, said he isn’t sure if the county has ever addressed the seizure process for sharp objects or tools that could be carried inside county buildings.

“I’m sure we could come up with something,” he said. “I don’t have any doubt that there’s a system we could come up with to work through it.”

Cantalamessa understands that there are parking challenges and said that they are addressing those.

“We have an RFQ (request for quotation) out, trying to obtain more parking, especially in this vicinity,” he said.

In the meantime, Cantalamessa said, the administration is trying to change the amnesty bin policy, working with their law department, on the consideration of weapons.

“If you get a farmer who walks in who’s had a knife in his pocket for 40 years, and doesn’t want to walk three blocks to put his knife in his car, we’re seizing it,” Malloy said. “He’s not trying to come in and cause any damage, he’s forfeiting it at the front door, he knows he has it.”

Cantalamessa said that people walking a distance away, to their parked cars, to leave items, or have them confiscated inside “doesn’t make much sense.”

“We want to be as public friendly and as customer friendly as we can, and this is just an effort to do that,” Cantalamessa said.

WIDENED SECURITY

Trumbull County Job and Family Services Director John Gargano told the commissioners that putting a new system in place at the Trumbull County Administrative Building should be a part of adjusting measures at all of the county’s buildings.

“We do have a significant amount of traffic at our buildings,” Gargano said. “Even though I have a parking lot, there are many individuals who live in the downtown area who come walking and stuff like that. And they’ve had the same issue.”

Tim Haniford, director of IT operations, also expressed to commissioners that his department will be working on an upgrade to the key fob system for the administrative building.

“Currently, everyone who has access into the building after hours has a physical hard key,” Haniford said. “If they were to lose that key, we don’t know where it would go or where it would end up. With this new system, not only would you be required to have a key, but you’d also have a key fob.”

The key fobs are individually programmed for each employee, within each department. Haniford said the programming on the key could be stopped if he were to lose his key. Access to departments would be granted later through a new key.

“The issue that we discovered through an audit was, if we just went through a key fob-only system and we went through a power outage, some type of natural disaster, or something that would be catastrophic to this area, those doors would be left open,” Haniford said.

This concern caused employees to continue using their traditional keys, along with the key fob system. The key fob system will now be added to the front entrance, in addition to its existing use within employee-only interior doors.

“During off-hours, employees will be required to use the key fob in order to access the building, along with their hard key,” Haniford said.

Haniford explained that disabled key fobs that are later used to try and gain access to different doors could be traced back to those who make attempts, by video camera, after the system is alerted.

“We’ve had significant upgrades to our security system in the last five years,” Cantalamessa said. “We shut down the back entrance to make it more secure, one ingress, one egress; We’ve added the metal detectors just in the past five years. This is just an ongoing effort to try to bolster security in our building. Unfortunately, it’s a sign of the times. We live in a world that’s uncertain and unpredictable, and we have to prepare for that, protecting both the public and our employees in all of our facilities.”

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