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accounts for the disparity is partly the crush of business.
By its sheer number of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits,
New York City’s courts are the busiest in the state. (Manhattan’s
Criminal Court Building is the busiest of all the courthouses.)
As a result, the city provides the highest level of security
and has the longest wait to get into the courts during the
morning rush, says Capt. Michael Castellano, who has been
a state court officer for 20 years.
The
disparity also results from how the machines are set. Beverly
Trollinger, spokeswoman for Garrett Electronics Inc., of Garland,
Texas, one of the nation's leading manufacturers of metal
detectors, says, "Each facility chooses the items they
don't want to pass through and sets the [appropriate] setting."
Rick
Williams, a Garrett technician, explains that the machine
has a variety of programs and levels on a scale of 1 to 199.
The Federal Aviation Administration, for example, has a national
setting known as D165. This setting is designed to catch even
the smallest firearm manufactured and knives larger than a
pocketknife. In order to catch a gum wrapper, Williams says,
the machine would have to be on a "prison setting."
The
officers who work at the courthouses say the settings are
determined by their superiors in the Office of Court Administration,
who say it is their policy not to discuss the settings with
the public.
Even
at their most sensitive, the magnometers are supposed to allow
a pack of cigarettes to pass through without setting off the
machines. But court officers say the foil on the packs do
sometimes trigger the mechanism.
Court
officers say that safety is more important than the few minutes
that people waste to ensure it. "Security and convenience
don’t go hand in hand," Castellano says.
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