April 8-14, 2004

city beat

Throwing the Book at Them

Safe haven?: In the wake of a recent sexual assault, the union representing city librarians says there is no way to monitor suspicious behavior from one facility to the next. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

City librarians remain worried about security. Big changes are expected.

by Daryl Gale

When a 23-year-old homeless man was arrested in February and accused of a brutal sexual assault on an 8-year-old girl in a library bathroom, the vast majority of Philadelphians were horrified and stunned. But a few people, while saddened and disgusted by the heinous act, were not at all surprised.

Librarians across Philadelphia, particularly at the Central Branch, say they were already well-versed in dealing with aggressive and angry threats and actions from patrons. They were also quite familiar with Brian McCutcheon, who has been held on bail following the incident at the Independence Branch.

Allen Merry is the shop steward for Local 2187, the union that covers the city's librarians, and has worked at the Central Branch for more than nine years. Merry says that not only were he and fellow librarians on a first-name basis with McCutcheon, but that he's been the subject of complaints for years.

As evidence, Merry produces an internal memo that outlines a chilling story. It's a missive between Merry and another union representative from June 7, 2003, about a teen library assistant who "observed a patron exposing himself and masturbating while seated at a computer." The 16-year-old girl informed her supervisor, who had the patron escorted from the building.

That patron's name was Brian McCutcheon.

In connection with the Independence Branch incident, McCutcheon faces a laundry list of charges, including aggravated assault, attempted murder, attempted rape, false imprisonment, sexual abuse and corrupting the morals of a minor. A trial date hasn't been set, but if convicted, McCutcheon will face a long, long time behind bars.

Part of the difficulty the librarians have in handling these cases, Merry says, is that there's not a mechanism in place to track dangerous or disruptive patrons, or to keep them from simply walking a few blocks to the next library branch.

"We can ban people from individual branches, but it's library policy not to ban people systemwide," Merry says. "The union has been asking for banning privileges for more than two years, but so far we've been butting our heads against the wall on this."

Pedro Ramos, the city solicitor, says that could soon change. The city's Law Department is working with the Free Library to outline a security policy "definitively regulating certain behaviors and defining boundaries," he says.

"It is our understanding that if the rules are behavior-based and equally enforced, people can be prevented access to public buildings like libraries," Ramos says. "Banning someone temporarily from all branches is possible, or even permanently, if there are boards of review and appeal."

If library-related academic journals are any indication, library safety is neither a new nor unique issue to Philadelphia. The executive editor of Academic Exchange Quarterly, Michael Lorenzen, talks candidly about why libraries nationwide are having similar problems, and why suggested solutions seem to fall short.

"People have a right to access to public buildings," says Lorenzen, who is also the head of reference at Central Michigan University's library. "Some homeless people have successfully sued library systems for policies they considered discriminatory, and it's difficult to write comprehensive safety and security policies that are fair to everyone.

"Municipalities find themselves trying to strike a delicate balance between the rights of the library patrons to feel safe and comfortable and the rights of the homeless who say they want to use the library to read, keep warm or look for jobs on the computers. Because some of the homeless have caused problems, sometimes people are willing to lump them all in the same category. I don't know of any city that's successfully been able to strike that balance to everyone's satisfaction."

After the February incident, the Free Library formed a security task force. An earlier task force, formed in 2001, dealt mainly in security issues involving Internet access, not the physical safety of librarians and patrons. Merry says that the newly formed task force has met regularly for the past two months to discuss safety and security concerns, but neither he nor his fellow union reps have been privy to any information about the meetings.

"No one seems in a hurry to produce the minutes of those meetings, or tell us what the status is," says Merry with a tone of exasperation. "This is a serious issue, and every day we do nothing, we put our employees and patrons in danger."

Merry hopes that the task force will make recommendations soon, and more importantly, that he and his fellow librarians have access to that information. Time, he says, is of the essence.

Just last Friday, Merry says, a man exposed himself to another library patron in the Central Branch's Literature Department, but got away before guards could catch him. Merry says that the police weren't called because the woman didn't want to file a complaint. That woman's reticence notwithstanding, Merry says all incidents should be reported to police, whether there's a chance of catching the perpetrator or not.

"I think a lot of this stuff goes unreported," he sighs. "It seems that someone has to make a big deal out of it for the administration to take this stuff seriously. What happened to that woman Friday was a sexual assault. Not anything like what happened to the little girl at the Independence Branch certainly, but still a sexual assault. We need to document each and every instance that happens, and keep detailed records of these incidents, and we're not doing that now."

Merry's complaints are valid but very nearly dated, says Free Library of Philadelphia Executive Director Eliot Shelkrot, who insists the task force is working on every issue raised by Merry and the librarians.

"We formed this new task force within two weeks of the incident at the Independence Branch," Shelkrot says. "We went around to different branches and asked employees about their concerns. We learned that staff was having difficulties when it came to telling patrons that their computer time was up or asking them not to download inappropriate materials like pornography."

Shelkrot says that he's already found a solution for that problem: a program that automatically notifies patrons when their computer time is winding down, then shuts the machine off when time is up. They've found another program, Shelkrot says, that filters out inappropriate materials, but finding that one was more difficult.

"If you program it to filter out female breasts or genitalia, for example, how would it tell the difference between Michelangelo, or a medical journal, or Larry Flynt?" Shelkrot asks. "It took time to find the program we were looking for that would be compatible with all our 750 computers."

Shelkrot says the new filters and self-timers will be in place in all libraries by July 1. He also says that library managers are serious about safety, and he's anxious to get the task force's recommendations, which he says he plans to act on immediately.

"We've seen the need for changes in security, and we've listened to our patrons and our employees," Shelkrot says. "If people don't feel comfortable, the library ceases to be an effective community resource. We are trying to reassure parents and children that the library is safe."