When I returned to work yesterday, I read in the weekly newsletter that someone tripped the burglar alarm at the library two Fridays ago when he tried to exit the library after it closed. About 30 minutes before closing, the circulation department starts making PA announcements about the closing. The final announcement is about 9 minutes before the posted closing time, and it says that the library is closing and the building must be cleared immediately. The "security person" makes a cursory check of the stairwells (4) and floors (5) at about that time, but I know they don't check the bathrooms. I suppose if you were closeted in a bathroom with an MP3 player blaring through the headphones, it would be quite possible to miss all the announcements, and to emerge 30 minutes later to find you have been locked in the building.
Anyway, when the straggler tried to exit the locked building he set off the burglar alarm, which sent the UNT police on the run, guns drawn. Then, while the police were dealing with the alarm-tripper, someone else, noticing the front door was unlocked, entered the building from the sidewalk. He too was confronted by the police and told to lie down on the floor.
I gather from the tone and content of the e-mail that people complained that someone involved in the incident, either the straggler or the hapless visitor, was treated unfairly by the police. None of my acquaintances in Circulation are here today, or I would try to find out what really happened.
Too bad the crackerjack reporting staff of the North Texas Daily has taken off for the summer. If not, we might have been able to find out the real scoop on the "Incident at the Willis Library."
And definitely too bad for the poor straggler that UNT Libraries don't blare the Hawaii Five-O theme from the loudspeaker to signal closing time, like the library at a more inventive institution used to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment