After anti-mask protest, Hilton Head will have metal detector, security guard for meetings
Residents will soon need to go through a metal detector to get into the Town Council chambers for public meetings on Hilton Head Island.
There also will be a security guard posted at the room’s entrance, Town Manager Marc Orlando announced Tuesday.
The changes follow a chaotic anti-mask protest that occurred during an August council meeting.
“There will be violence somewhere along the way” if similar meetings happen in the future, Mayor John McCann said at the time.
“We need a plan,” McCann said this past summer. “If we can’t secure our house, how the hell are we going to secure the island?”
Anti-mask activists had blasted the council with a wave of vitriol and COVID-19 misinformation at the meeting, forcing McCann to end it early. Elected officials left the chambers flanked by deputies from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
Before the raucous meeting, Orlando had proposed that the town spend $1 million in federal American Rescue Plan funding to bolster security and technology systems in the building.
The Town Council then approved Orlando’s proposal in a 7-0 vote following the protest.
Some of the $1 million in funds also will be used for new electronic locks, magnetometers and security cameras at the Town Council chambers, the proposal said. (The town will receive a total of $5.2 million in American Rescue Plan dollars, which will be used to support a home repair program, sewer connection grants and the Town Hall security upgrades, among other things.)
What’s next?
The council started to meet virtually a few days after the protest due to the Lowcountry’s then-escalating COVID-19 surge.
As the wave of infections ended this fall, McCann said in October that he needed reports on COVID-19 and Town Hall safety before returning to in-person public meetings.
On Tuesday, after Orlando announced the town’s new metal detector and security guard policy, and the CEO of Hilton Head Regional Healthcare briefed the council on the region’s low number of coronavirus inpatients, McCann said he plans to resume in-person public meetings at Town Hall in January 2022 “unless something happens unexpectedly.”
It’s unclear whether COVID-19 trends will continue to improve in Beaufort County.
A recent coronavirus spike in Europe should serve as a warning for the United States, some experts say, especially given America’s devastating surge during the 2020 holiday season.
This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 11:50 AM.
