Lined up in the deep freeze

It would appear that my colleague, Murray Newman, beat me to the punch with his pictures of folks lined up outside the Criminal (In)justice Center this morning in temperatures that hovered around 27 degrees. Murray's photos show the view up San Jacinto Street.

As Paul Harvey might have said once or twice, here's the rest of the story -- the folks lined up in front of the courthouse on Franklin Street.

Enough of the madness. Most of the security measures at the courthouse are unnecessary. There are plenty of courthouses around this state without metal detectors and they seem to operate just fine.

It's time to stagger the morning dockets. It's time to granting longer resets for cases in which the defendant is out on bond. It's time to tune down the metal detectors. Do we really need everyone to take their shoes and boots off just to get into the courthouse?

You can bet that if the judges, prosecutors, county commissioners and the Office of Court Administration had to stand outside in a slow-moving line in sub-freezing temperatures, things would change.