A man with a gun was shot to death outside the Colorado governor?s office in the Denver capitol by a state trooper on Monday, but Maryland officials said an armed gunman is unlikely to get as far in the Maryland State House.
The State House and the other three legislative office buildings nearby all have metal detectors at the entrances staffed by armed Department of General Services police. Visitors also must show picture identification. Only those with special state government ID cards, including reporters and registered lobbyists, can enter the buildings without going through the detectors.
“We consider the State House and the legislative buildings as high security,” General Services spokesman Dave Humphrey said.
The Colorado capitol building had no metal detectors. The detectors had been installed after the Sept. 11 attacks, but then removed at the request of state legislators who did not want to discourage the public from visiting.
Kae Warnock, a policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures, told The Associated Press that only about 20 states have metal detectors in their capitol buildings.
A uniformed and armed General Services police officer screens visitors at the entrance to the second floor offices of Gov. Martin O?Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown.
The two men also are protected by an “executive detail” of plainclothes state troopers who are armed and specially trained in executive protection.
The state police does not release their exact numbers, but the governor is always accompanied out in public by at least one trooper and often several, and they are also close by in his office and have a 24-hour operation on the ground floor of his residence at Government House.
