Metal Detectors

I have been a patient at John Hopkins, and I have been there several different times due to my own mother having surgery, and I guess to hear a bad thing can make anyone snap if it is severe enough ("Fear strikes at Hopkins," Sept. 17). We as people know that a doctor can only perform surgery. He can't make miracles happen, unless sometimes unexplained things do and can occur. I am hoping that the people who run the security there really look at all aspects of this entire day and just how it may have been avoided.

Gov. Martin O'Malley will hold his first "tweetup" -- a gathering of users of the Twitter social media site -- on Jan. 12 at the State House. According to the governor's office, attendees will be selcected at random from people who fill out the online application form for the gathering, which will focus on the agenda for the 90-day legislative session that begins the day before. Takirra Winfield, O'Malley's deputy press secretary, said the exact time and place within the State House are undecided, though the likely location is the second-floor Reception Room.

Paul Warren Pardus did not have to evade security Thursday when he took a handgun to the eighth floor of the Nelson Building at Johns Hopkins Hospital. There was nothing to stop him from carrying a gun into the hospital, no metal detector to set off an alarm. While Hopkins has long focused on safety at its sprawling medical campus in crime-plagued East Baltimore, the hospital does not require patients or visitors to pass through metal detectors, as Americans must do now at airports, courthouses and many federal buildings.

In response to your report on Baltimore City's population decline, since most of the people leaving are parents with school-age children, the city must consider ways to compete with the county schools ("Grow the city's population, but don't stop there," Nov. 29). Here are some ways Baltimore City could improve public education for its students: •Raise funds to cover costs by floating bonds, while seeking donations of money, books and supplies and holding fundraisers such as bazaars, festivals, ticketed performances and auctions.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Everything is different this year, and it's got nothing to do with the weather.The difference is the sound you don't hear.The sound you don't hear is of bombs dropping, as once seen on your very own TV screen to dramatic commentary from Peter Arnett or Arthur "The Hunk" Kent. Where are they now?There's no war this time around. Last year, until the moment the game began, there might as well have not been a Super Bowl.Yes, it was only a year ago, the war that many people apparently already have forgotten.

NEW YORK - As students approach John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, they take off their watches, unbuckle their belts and empty the change from their pockets. Couples embrace before parting to go to single-sex entrances at opposite ends of the building. There, they place their bags under scanners and walk through metal detectors. If they set those off, they are patted down. This process, similar to passenger screening at airports, is a daily ritual for the more than 4,000 students at Kennedy, where students are often late for first-period classes after standing in line for 30 minutes or more.

A violence-filled week for Baltimore public school students - including a shooting on the grounds of Frederick Douglass High School yesterday - has ignited a community debate over whether installing metal detectors would make children any safer. State Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said she would support having metal detectors in the city's most dangerous schools, especially if parents want them. But many others said the fix would be short-sighted, expensive and ineffective. City school system officials said that, while they are willing to discuss the issue, they are not going to rush out to buy the devices immediately.

Better to be safe than sorry is always good policy when dealing with high school sports.Executive secretary Ned Sparks and the Maryland PublicSecondary Schools Athletic Association made a wise decision last weekend at the boys' state playoffs. For the first time, the MPSSAA used metal detectors at each entrance to the University of Maryland's Cole Field House.Each fan who sought entrance into the arena Thursday through Sunday raised his hands above his or her head and was checked by an MPSSAA official with a hand-held metal detector.

Metal detectors are scheduled to be installed in the Baltimore Post Office next week, a move one senior manager said was taken to guard against any violent incident, including potential problems with disgruntled employees.The decision to install the detectors was made before yesterday's two postal office shootings, one involving a Dearborn, Mich., postal employee who had lost a promotion to a co-worker and the other involving a fired postal worker in Dana Point, Calif.But 11 separate shooting incidents -- involving 35 fatalities -- by disgruntled postal workers around the nation over the past decade have raised concerns about post office security and employment conditions throughout the Postal Service.

At Northern High School, the steady beep of metal detectors has become a familiar sound of the morning ritual, as common as the first bell.Weapons searches started at Northern two weeks ago, after a shooting in a hallway in which no victims or witnesses have come forward.Principal Alice Morgan Brown laments the need to subject students to the metal detectors -- they are inconvenient, but necessary.Since the searches started, "Mostly, we've confiscated knives and beepers, sometimes a metal fingernail file," Ms. Brown said.

I am thinking about the events that occurred at the Johns Hopkins Hospital on Sept. 16. Apparently, a surgeon was providing an update to one of his patients about her condition; her son heard the conversation, pulled a semi-automatic handgun out of his pants and shot the surgeon on the spot, right there in one of the most famous hospitals in the world. All this because the shooter was apparently unhappy with the medical care provided for his mother. He then proceeded to use that gun to kill the patient and then himself, in the process terrorizing the hospital, its patients and visitors for the better part of a day. I interact with our health care system as a doctor at this hospital, as well as being a potential patient and visitor, and I am left with an uneasy feeling about what this means for our society.

The natural question after Dr. David Cohen was shot Thursday by the disgruntled son of patient was how the man was able to bring a handgun into the hospital in the first place. And the answer is something the thousands of people who work at Hopkins — and most any other big hospital — are all too aware of: There are no metal detectors, and the screening of patients and visitors is generally cursory at best. The head of Hopkins security said after the incident that metal detectors are extremely rare in hospitals and that installing them in a place like Hopkins, which has some 80 entrances, would be logistically difficult.

I have been a patient at John Hopkins, and I have been there several different times due to my own mother having surgery, and I guess to hear a bad thing can make anyone snap if it is severe enough ("Fear strikes at Hopkins," Sept. 17). We as people know that a doctor can only perform surgery. He can't make miracles happen, unless sometimes unexplained things do and can occur. I am hoping that the people who run the security there really look at all aspects of this entire day and just how it may have been avoided.

Paul Warren Pardus did not have to evade security Thursday when he took a handgun to the eighth floor of the Nelson Building at Johns Hopkins Hospital. There was nothing to stop him from carrying a gun into the hospital, no metal detector to set off an alarm. While Hopkins has long focused on safety at its sprawling medical campus in crime-plagued East Baltimore, the hospital does not require patients or visitors to pass through metal detectors, as Americans must do now at airports, courthouses and many federal buildings.

Authorities were trying to determine Friday how an 8-year-old boy obtained a loaded handgun that was found in his backpack by school police after he made threats toward a classmate. The third-grader at Sharp-Leadenhall Elementary School, a small Baltimore City school for special-needs children, was arrested Thursday afternoon and charged as a juvenile with handgun possession. School officials said the boy was "acting suspiciously" and staff began closely monitoring his behavior, which led to a search of his backpack and the discovery of a .380-caliber handgun.

A man questioned in Tuesday evening's shooting outside a Baltimore high school basketball game has been released without being charged, as police continue to search for the gunman behind an attack that forced the teams into lockdown and shut down public transportation at a busy mall. The Baltimore Police Department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said on Wednesday that detectives have spoken with witnesses and are reviewing surveillance tapes from the Mondawmin Mall transit hub, which is near where the shooting occurred outside Frederick Douglass High School on Gwynns Falls Parkway.

He doesn't adopt the flashy style of a used car salesman, but Baltimore Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III is ready to deal.For sale: 17 used metal detectors from the old Margate Court, Lexington Terrace and Murphy Homes public housing communities,which have been torn down or are scheduled for demolition."

General Assembly leaders have raised concerns about a proposal to put metal detectors in the State House but stopped short yesterday of halting plans to install the devices. Several ranking legislators - both Republican and Democrat - have come out against the proposal to force visitors to the State House and adjoining legislative buildings to go through metal detectors. In a letter released yesterday, Assembly leaders instructed the state Department of General Services to proceed with plans to improve security but asked the department to take into account the concerns of legislators.

A man questioned in Tuesday evening's shooting outside a Baltimore high school basketball game has been released without being charged, as police continue to search for the gunman behind an attack that forced the teams into lockdown and shut down public transportation at a busy mall. The Baltimore Police Department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said on Wednesday that detectives have spoken with witnesses and are reviewing surveillance tapes from the Mondawmin Mall transit hub, which is near where the shooting occurred outside Frederick Douglass High School on Gwynns Falls Parkway.

A man questioned in Tuesday evening's shooting outside a Baltimore high school basketball game has been released without being charged as police continue to search for the gunman behind an attack that forced the teams into lockdown and shut down public transportation at a busy mall. The Baltimore Police Department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said on Wednesday that detectives have spoken with witnesses and are reviewing surveillance tapes from the Mondawmin Mall transit hub, which is near where the shooting occurred outside Frederick Douglass High School on Gwynns Falls Parkway.