This story was originally published in Based in Lafayette
By Dave Bangert
Based in Lafayette
March 4, 2025
A metal detector at the entrance to a Tippecanoe County annex building housing the prosecutor’s and public defender’s offices was removed in recent weeks after a lawsuit accused the county of overstepping laws regarding possession and carrying handguns.
According to a settlement filed Feb. 19 in Tippecanoe Circuit Court, the county removed the metal detector at 111 N. Fourth St., across from the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, on Jan. 31.
Kirk Freeman, a Lafayette attorney representing two men who filed the lawsuit in June 2024, called the settlement a reasonable compromise and a victory for gun owners in a complaint that centered on “ensuring that the government didn’t overstep their bounds.”
County attorney Doug Masson said this week that the county stood by its position that it was in bounds in wanting to know what people were bringing into the annex building, even if the county was limited in its ability to make anyone surrender a firearm in a building that doesn’t have courtrooms. Firearms, for instance, are not allowed in the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, where visitors must go through a metal detector before going inside.
From a practical matter, Masson said, the metal detector at the annex offices wasn’t routinely staffed with a bailiff, anyway, and the equipment had been swapped out at various times to replace equipment when it wasn’t working at the courthouse.
“We still think we were legally allowed to do it, but we weren’t using it,” Masson said. “It wasn’t worth fighting over. So, that’s where it ended.”
The settlement covered the metal detector’s removal. It included no financial agreement.
“It wasn’t really a vindictive thing,” Freeman said. “We kind of hit them with the flat of the sword. We didn’t want money or want to burn it down or anything – you know, soak the taxpayers. All we wanted is them to follow the law, and we’re happy with the result.”
The lawsuit was filed by Lafayette residents Michael Breece and Richard Schmalzried. Freeman said they weren’t people who had regular business at the annex and had never been involved in an incident over the use of the metal detector.
“They’re just concerned citizens (who said), hey, wait a minute, what do you mean I can’t do that?” Freeman said this week.
The lawsuit challenged the county policy as one that illegally crossed a state law that preempts local governments from regulating firearms, including carrying firearms.
“This metal detector creates an illegal chilling effect on plaintiffs, and anyone else, who wishes to exercise his civil right to carry a firearm pursuant to his constitutional right under the state and federal constitutions,” the initial complaint argued.
“It was my clients’ intent that, look, we can’t give them the first rung of the ladder, because they’ll scamper all the way up,” Freeman said. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. So you’ve got to tell these people, to tell the government, hey, look, we’re on to you. We know what’s going on. We won’t tolerate it.”
For Freeman, the beef over the metal detector at the annex building dates to 2017, when he first challenged why it was there.
According to an account in the Journal & Courier, Freeman accused county officials of singling him out after bailiffs asked him to step into a men’s room at the Tippecanoe County Courthouse to prove that he had no handgun, as someone had reported to police. He contended at the time that it was an attempt to scare him from pursuing questions about the county’s annex when it first opened. Freeman had filed a public records request to find out whether the annex actually had a courtroom – as he’d been told during a May 2017 tour of the facility – or whether it was what he called “a phony courtroom” that would prevent him and anyone else with a license from carrying a handgun into the building. Freeman said at the time that he showed bailiffs that he had no gun, but he continued to press his suspicions that the incident was retaliation for his questions.
Freeman filed a lawsuit in 2018, accusing a county magistrate of defamation for wrongly accusing him, but the case was dismissed. The Indiana Court of Appeals declined to take up the case in 2019, according to an account in the J&C.
Freeman said he continued to monitor the annex, including when the metal detector stood there unused.
“People could just walk in, so I was like, what’s the point of this?” Freeman said. “I, being a cynic, had always just assumed they’re going to make every county property put a magistrate court in there, and that way they get to have their security. They never did. … It got to the point where we went forward with the suit just to get them out of there.”
Dave Bangert retired after 32 years of reporting and writing on just about everything at the Lafayette Journal & Courier. He started the Based in Lafayette reporting project in 2021. To learn more about subscribing to Based in Lafayette, click here.
