Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said Tuesday a break-in this weekend on the courthouse campus illustrated a need to beef up security.

Steve Bartel, head of the county’s Risk Management team, responded Wednesday that many of the improvements the sheriff talked about are in the works, or are being discussed. But budget concerns and the slow march of bureaucracy have slowed those efforts.

“This is government. Nothing happens overnight,” Bartel said.

Justin P. Reinhardt is being held on charges stemming from the break-in, which occurred Saturday afternoon in the Public Safety Building, where the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and Spokane Police Department are housed. Investigators say Reinhardt broke the glass windows on the front of the building attached to the Spokane County Jail and hid above ceiling tiles before being taken into custody without incident.

Knezovich said the campus wasn’t secure due to a lack of cameras, and the weakness of the glass.

Bartel said the county received a grant, in cooperation with the Sheriff’s Office, for a server to support a camera system the county hopes to install soon.

“The first grant was to get the infrastructure in place,” he said. “You’ve got to have this foundation, first, before you start installing cameras.”

Cameras could serve as a warning to would-be criminals, Bartel said, but he doubted whether they’d be able to actually stop someone from breaking and entering.

“Cameras themselves are a great deterrent,” he said. “But would they have stopped what happened last weekend? No.”

As for the glass, Bartel said a representative from the Department of Homeland Security recently visited the campus to assess its security. The Risk Management department is waiting on the report from that visit, which may include recommendations about the windows.

But Bartel said he spoke with Marshall Farnell, the county’s chief executive, who told him the windows hadn’t been an issue for the more than 40 years Farnell has spent with the county.

“That’s not an excuse,” Bartel said. “Certainly we’ll look at it closer.”

Bartel said a barrier to improving security has been the lack of a full-time employee overseeing security operations on the campus. The county employs one part-time campus security coordinator, Ray Bush, who is available 30 hours a week, Bartel said.

“I’ve been trying to get that position fully funded for a year and a half,” he said.

The grounds of the courthouse and Public Safety Building are routinely patrolled by security officers, Bartel said. A courtroom deputy is on call for issues arising from the courthouse, and all judge’s chambers are connected to law enforcement via a panic alert system. Background checks are conducted on all contractors and vendors who enter county buildings.

All of these measures could be upgraded, Bartel said, but the question is figuring out where limited dollars should be spent.

“We want to really get the details on what we’ve got, and what we need to improve,” Bartel said.

The county spent a little less than $1 million of its $170 million General Fund budget this year on courthouse security.

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