After 'chaotic' week without cellphone storage lockers, Chicago court visitors can use them again
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Some visitors to Chicago’s main criminal courthouse left their cellphones in concrete planters last week. Others paid a food truck vendor $2 to hold their cellphones, or even left them with stranger, after the courthouse administration eliminated storage lockers formerly provided for the banned devices.
As of Monday, however, after a “tough chaotic” week, the storage lockers will be available once again to defendants, witnesses and other courthouse visitors, but in a slightly different location, the Chicago Tribune (reg. req.) reports.
Instead of being placed in front of a security checkpoint, where they could, officials said, be used to store contraband as well as phones, storage lockers will now be available for use only after individuals have passed through security.
The ban on cellphones was announced in 2013, after 19 judges at the court complained that there had been issues with phones being used to take photos and videos in courtrooms. An exception allowed lawyers, jurors and journalists, among others, to keep their cellphones. Meanwhile, for those who couldn’t, the lockers were provided.
Reports of the difficulties experienced last week by individuals who arrived at the courthouse with their phones only to discover they couldn’t bring them into court and had no officially designated storage option apparently persuaded those in charge to rethink the new locker policy.
Late in the day Friday, Chief Cook County Circuit Judge Timothy Evans announced that he, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Sheriff Tom Dart had found a way to keep the storage lockers without unduly compromising courthouse security—simply by relocating them behind the security checkpoint.
“The return of the lockers is simply the right thing to do, and this is a great day for the thousands of courthouse patrons who require the use of their phones to go about their everyday lives,” Dart said in the release.
