Five days after a shooting at the Cook County courthouse, the county board forged ahead with its regularly scheduled meeting in the Commissioners’ Room Tuesday, December 20, 2011. The courthouse had been closed until 10 a.m. that morning at the conclusion of county staff meetings with an employee assistance team.
“We all realize this is going to take a while to heal,” board chair Jim Johnson said, “but we realize we all have to continue the work of the courthouse.” He said they would modify their tasks as needed in order to cope with the emotional aftereffects. “I think this is going to take quite a bit of time,” he said. “A lot of the people in the courthouse were traumatized.”
Johnson recognized that others were traumatized as well. “It really is going to take a while for the community to work this out,” he said. Procedures for jury
Jim Hall of Lutsen spoke during the public comment period, saying that he was one of the 12 jurors who had handed down guilty verdicts December 15 in four of the five charges leveled against Dan Schlienz, 42, of Grand Marais, just before he allegedly shot County Attorney Tim Scannell and subpoenaed witness Greg Thompson.
Hall appealed to the county board to work with the Sheriff ’s Office and the judicial system to develop a procedure that jurors would be taught to follow in situations like that. “We didn’t know what to do,” Hall said. “Everybody left.” It was later that he learned that Bailiff Gary Radloff had locked the courtroom before running to the scene of the shooting in and around the county attorney’s office adjacent to the courtroom.
Hall said that when the shooting started, the jurors went from the courtroom into a special room designated for jurors. It seemed safe, he said, except for the fact that it had a window. Nancy Backlund of the court administrator’s office did a fantastic job of trying to keep them safe, Hall said. She brought them to a locked bathroom in the basement. “It’s kind of a trying situation to be under” as a juror, Hall said, adding that jurors need to know what to do and where to go in situations like that. He said domestic assault and other criminal cases could bring trouble like this.
“You guys went through a lot,” Commissioner Johnson said. He told Hall that the county would be reviewing its procedures. Commissioner Bruce Martinson asked Sheriff Mark Falk how long the process of reviewing procedures would take.
“We haven’t had a chance to take a breath,” Falk said, but he assured the board that his department would be dealing with this. Developing security protocol
Later in the meeting, Personnel Director Janet Simonen addressed some routine Safety Committee business. Employers with more than 25 employees are required by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to have safety committees. Commissioner Sue Hakes asked if the board needed to designate a commissioner to be in charge of making sure emergency safety protocols are reviewed. Simonen said the Safety Committee is under the Personnel Department, and Commissioner Jan Hall is the board liaison to that department.
Commissioner Hakes indicated she believes the county board should be involved in making make sure security issues are addressed. Commissioner Bruce Martinson suggested that they discuss this at the January 3 organizational meeting in which they make assignments to committees and other boards.
Commissioner Johnson commended Simonen for all the time she had spent over the weekend dealing with the multiple issues involved in responding to the shooting: calling in an employee assistance team, attending to pay and benefits, building cleanup, insurance, media contacts, etc. “You went way above and beyond what we expect,” Johnson said, “but we’re grateful you did.”
On Tuesday, December 27, the Cook County Sheriff ’s Office sent out a news release saying that Dan Schlienz died in a Duluth hospital early that morning about 12 hours after exhibiting signs of medical distress at the St. Louis County jail. A St. Louis County Sheriff ’s Office news release later that day stated that an autopsy had been performed but the cause of death was undetermined until the results of further tests are received. Johnson to be absent
Johnson will not be involved in much board business over the next two or three months because he will be receiving cancer treatments out of the area. The other four commissioners will cover the outside meetings he would otherwise attend. He stated in a December 19 newsletter to his constituents, “I plan to remain active as your commissioner during the next year. I appreciate your prayers and concerns and the miracles of modern medical science.”
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