DULUTH — Security concerns persist at the downtown public library, and the city continues to look for ways to improve the situation.
Toward that end, the Duluth Police Department has been providing support at the library lately.
The police presence has been useful, according to Library Manager Carla Powers.
“We have extra-duty police officer patrols three days a week now at kind of random times, and that has helped a lot. It keeps things calm,” she said.
“We did have some suspicion that there was some drug dealing going on,” Powers said. “We were worried that was happening here, and having the officers around has tamped down on that as well.”
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We see that there is a relatively high level of crime risk in and around the library’s location, as well as some moderate other sorts of threats of things like civil unrest, mostly because of proximity to the courts and City Hall.
Recent incidents include someone being punched outside the building; a drug overdose that a library security specialist responded to with Narcan; disruptive behavior; and inappropriate or threatening comments made to staff, Powers said.
“It wears on the staff and it’s not the kind of atmosphere that we’re trying to promote here at the library,” she said.
Powers appreciates the police support the library has received lately, but said she views it as a "stop-gap."
“I don’t think we intend to continue having police officers in the building forever," she said. "But it’s necessary right now, and it’s making a difference.”
The library recently hired a firm to assess security at its downtown location. Lindsay Woolward, a consultant for Guidepost Assessments, noted that 33% of staff who responded to a survey said that they felt “somewhat unsafe” on the job and nearly 40% said they felt “less safe” than they had previously at the library.
“This is a relatively high proportion for similar institutions that we’ve seen, and it alerts us that the staff are dealing with a relatively high level of threatening or stressful incidents in the workplace,” he said.
Only one-quarter of surveyed staff said the library was adequately prepared to respond to an emergency.
“This is indicative that there’s a lot of conversation happening within the staff and between staff and leadership about how to handle things. It’s an active and evolving program. There’s a lot of dialogue happening. But there isn’t a good sense of: ‘This is how we would respond.’” Woolward said.
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But library users generally give the place higher marks, he noted.
“Patrons definitely feel the staff is doing a good job in general. They feel more safe than staff reported feeling at the library,” Woolward said, noting that about two-thirds of public survey respondents indicated they had never felt unsafe there.
“Staff is doing a good job of doing the hard work to maintain safety in the library but that they are directly intervening in situations that feel threatening and taking on that burden individually,” he said.
It’s kind of difficult because there’s also, I think, sometimes a perception that things are more unsafe than they actually are downtown or in the library. ... But it is a reality right now, and it’s a reality at public libraries all over the country, especially in urban areas.
But Woolward acknowledged the downtown library operates in a sometimes-challenging environment.
“We see that there is a relatively high level of crime risk in and around the library’s location, as well as some moderate other sorts of threats of things like civil unrest, mostly because of proximity to the courts and City Hall. There might be some spillover there,” Woolward said.
He pointed to data from the Uniform Crime Reporting system used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to model crime risks, which indicates that the chance of crime in the vicinity of Duluth’s downtown library is about 4.3 times greater than the typical average potential of criminal activity nationwide.
Woolward praised the recent decision to hire a library safety specialist. “But that specialist position doesn’t cover all operational hours. So, there are still gaps,” he said.
Woolward said the library’s layout and size also pose a challenge for a staff of the available size to monitor.
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Guidepost offered a number of recommendations, including ideas for how to reconfigure the library in the future, the idea of co-locating other city services in the building to increase the number of eyes in the building, a better security camera system and improved technology.
Earlier this month, the Duluth City Council approved a resolution in support of the city implementing many of the recommendations, “as resources permit.” But funding for the proposed first slate of improvements, expected to cost more than $135,000, remains a missing piece of the puzzle.
Nevertheless, Powers said, “I do feel like it was helpful to have the City Council approve the security assessment, in part because now they’re aware of the work that was done and also I feel like it affirmed what we’re seeing here at the library.”
At the same time, Powers has mixed feelings about shining a light on the issue.
“It’s kind of difficult because there’s also, I think, sometimes a perception that things are more unsafe than they actually are downtown or in the library," she said. "So, I don’t want to feed into that. But it is a reality right now, and it’s a reality at public libraries all over the country, especially in urban areas."
For now, Powers said she and staff are working to prioritize the consultant’s recommendations with the intent to “find the immediate low-cost options that we can move forward with right now,” while also preparing to request funding for more expensive long-range options in the future.
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