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Shooting at Weston hospital shows need for gun law, health officials say
By Bob LaMendola
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
June 18, 2007
A murder-suicide at the Cleveland Clinic Weston this month showed how easy it is to sneak a gun into a hospital, but health officials said Florida legislators have thwarted attempts to make it harder.
The Legislature for five years rejected bills that would outlaw bringing a gun into a health facility, a move that would clarify a legal gray area making it difficult for hospitals to take tougher steps. Hospitals and nurses pushing the bill stopped trying in 2005.
"Hospitals are places where drugs are kept, where many people come in who are sick or under a lot of stress. It doesn't seem like a place where you want guns," said Richard Rasmussen, a spokesman for the Florida Hospital Association. "But there hasn't been legislative interest."
The 30 hospitals in Broward and Palm Beach counties try to monitor 1.2 million emergency room patients a year, 418,000 in-patients and all their visitors to keep out people with no reason to be there.
Their tools: identification checkpoints; security guards; off-duty police; electronic locks for high-stress areas such as emergency, delivery and psychiatric units; and thousands of closed-circuit TV cameras.
Some health officials said they hoped the Cleveland Clinic death and one last fall would revive the no-guns legislation.
On June 4, Weston retiree Alberto Volinsky, 86, shot his wife, Hildegard, in her hospital bed, then shot himself. Cleveland Clinic has not disclosed her illness but said her condition was not terminal. The hospital has a no-guns policy but did not detect his pistol, police said.
In November, an impatient customer shot and killed a pharmacy manager at Shands Jacksonville Hospital.
The proposed bill would have added hospitals and health facilities to a list of places where guns cannot be taken, even by people with permits to legally carry them. The list includes courtrooms, polling places, government offices, large sports events, schools, airports and bars.
The bill was filed first in 2000, after two deaths. Psychiatrist Christina Smith was shot in December 1998 at Parkway Regional Medical Center in North Miami Beach by a mentally ill patient who smuggled a gun in a typewriter. A month later, surgeon Bradley Silverman was shot by a disgruntled patient in an office building at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center.
The chief Florida lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, Marion Hammer, opposed the bill, calling it an infringement on gun rights.
Buddy Bevis, director of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said the bill was unnecessary. He said hospitals need only post signs saying guns are not permitted on the property. If a person refuses to disarm or depart, the hospital can call the police to remove the person for trespassing, he said.
"If you post your private property, they can't carry it there," Bevis said. "It's rock solid. Gun rights don't trump property rights."
Hospital officials are skeptical. Police may give low priority to trespassing calls, and some prosecutors will not file charges, Rasmussen said.
The situation leaves hospitals in a legal gray area. Holders of concealed-weapons permits can carry a gun, but hospitals could ask them to return it to the car or put it in a hospital safe.
"We would have to call the police, and then it becomes confrontational. Nobody wants that," said James Kendig, past president of a safety committee for Florida hospitals.
If the law were in place, hospitals could insist more strongly on keeping out guns. Without it, officials said hospitals would not consider buying metal detectors, which, along with magnetic hand-held wands, are the best ways to find guns.
"We have a policy of no weapons, but we don't have any way to see them," said Cynthia Forkner, a spokeswoman for Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach.
Large trauma hospitals or those in high-crime areas may consider metal detectors for stressful areas such as emergency rooms, said C. Kennon Hetlage, chief executive of Memorial Hospital West and chairman of the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association.
"We're most concerned about the heat-of-the-moment situations where there's a domestic dispute or gang violence," Hetlage said.
But metal detectors may create an intimidating, unsafe image undesirable for hospitals, said Barbara Alford, an operations chief at the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which regulates hospitals.
Some doubt new laws or devices can keep out someone intent on doing harm.
"I don't know if you can ever prevent ... what happened at Cleveland Clinic," Hetlage said. "If you put a metal detector at the entrance, they'll find another way to get in. If it's not a gun, it could be sleeping pills or poison."
Staff Writer Megan O'Matz contributed to this report.
Bob LaMendola can be reached at [email protected] or 954-356-4526 or 561-243-6600, ext. 4526.
