Texas police building withstands gun attack, showing value of secure design
Secure access points and the arrangement of rooms create a buffer between McKinney law enforcement officials and the public; windows sit just above eye level to prevent direct attack; they slope to limit ledges for explosive devices; bulletproof glass protects the lobby, and bullet-resistant liner lies inside the masonry walls
After not one employee felt a scratch when Patrick Gray Sharp fired more than 100 rounds at McKinney’s public safety building in Dallas, Texas, Tuesday, the building itself became a hero.
Praised in public by the mayor and police chief, the bulletproof fortress represents the new breed of municipal buildings. In an era of homeland security, even the smallest towns are erecting safeguarded structures designed to keep people out rather than draw them in. And on Tuesday, it paid off.
“We saw the design change after the Oklahoma City bombing,” said Zach Walker, whose company, Pogue Construction, led the $17.6 million McKinney project four years ago. “Whereas before people thought of public buildings as open spaces to see your tax dollars at work, now they’ve started thinking about those people’s safety and closing off the building. The intent is to separate.”
The Dallas Morning News’s Jessica Meyers writes that secure access points and the arrangement of rooms create a buffer between McKinney law enforcement officials and the public. Windows sit just above eye level to prevent direct attack. They slope to limit ledges for explosive devices. Bulletproof glass protects the lobby, and bullet-resistant liner lies inside the masonry walls.
Outside, concrete structures called bollards block cars from smashing through the entrance. Manicured trees make climbing or concealment difficult. Thorny bushes hover near the building’s sides. Transformers and utilities sit several meters away from the 84,100-square-foot structure.
“It was the cusp of 9/11,” said James McClaren, whose Phoenix-based architecture group planned the building’s security. “[McKinney officials’] perception was that they wanted to make sure of safety if something exactly like this happened.”
McClaren’s company also designed buildings for the Dallas, Garland, Frisco, and Southlake police departments. It is working on a police facility in Highland Park.
Mayor Brian Loughmiller, who was a council member during negotiations about the building, lauded the city’s foresight when he spoke publicly after the shooting. “The safety features designed in the building ultimately protected our city employees from harm,” he said. He declined to be interviewed about it, as did police officials.
“It’s the bollardization of the United States,” said Richard Hayes, director of knowledge resources at the American Institute of Architects. Now even schools focus intently on security design, he said.
Building rampages are not new. From his perch in the tower at the University of Texas, Charles Whitman killed fourteen people in 1966. The 1991 massacre at a Luby’s restaurant in Killeen helped prompt building blockades. Columbine and Virginia Tech followed.
A Missouri city council shooting in 2008 killed six, including the mayor, and left government employees nationwide questioning their safety. A January shooting at a federal courthouse in Las Vegas has reinforced the need for the metal detectors and bag scanners increasingly seen in the country’s courthouses. A March shooting at the Pentagon’s entrance made even one of the most secure buildings in the nation look vulnerable.
Such incidents do not spur changes in security as often as people might assume, said Daniel O’Neill, president of Applied Risk Management, a Massachusetts-based security engineering firm. “There’s not a lot of code for security, not a lot of standards,” he said. “In general, with buildings we don’t see security included early enough.”
Funding tends to hamper the process. Bulletproof materials raise costs exponentially, O’Neill said, calling McKinney’s building “a pretty good vision.” “They’re fortunate to get that through the budget process,” he said.
O’Neill has run his security business almost fifteen years and couldn’t think of an incident that matched McKinney’s unsung hero – its multimillion-dollar edifice. “It seems pretty significant,” he said. “More than 100 rounds, that must be a record.”
