Ken Fangohr lumbered down 15th Street in the 11-passenger van he calls “The White Rhino.”

It was a stormy day, and Fangohr was complaining that the van had just been washed.

The van’s rear compartment was empty at the moment, but a few miles away at the Douglas County Jail, four inmates were waiting for Fangohr to pick them up and drive them to appearances in Douglas County District Court.

“The majority of people want to go to court,” Fangohr said later. “It might be a good thing. They might get a bond reduction.”

The court system and the jail have a videoconference setup, via which most prisoners make their first appearances before a judge. After that, most prisoners attend their court proceedings in person.

The 46-year-old Fangohr — commonly called by his nickname, “Fang” — is one of five court-security officers for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. Their main task is to maintain order inside the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th St., during a daily parade of inmates, unhappy couples, spectators, attorneys and confused citizens.

They stand, sometimes for hours on end. If a judge asks them to, they confiscate ringing cell phones.

And, ever since Douglas County’s new jail on the southeast edge of town opened in 1999, they cross Lawrence again and again in the White Rhino, ferrying inmates to court.

“When the new jail opened up, our job expanded greatly,” Fangohr said.

The White Rhino

In the rear of the van is a low-ceilinged compartment with a metal floor, metal benches and seatbelts. Etched into the walls are dozens of graffiti messages such as “AK-47” and “Freedom.” A similar, smaller compartment sits between the driver and the rear.

Deputy Carey Sramek cuffs an inmate as another inmate peers through the window of his holding cell. Sramek, an unarmed court-security officer at the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, transported the inmates to their holding cells before and after their Tuesday court hearings in Lawrence.

Fangohr isn’t sure how the van’s passengers are able to leave these messages, given that they’re not allowed to have sharp implements.

“The things people can do,” he said, shaking his head while inspecting them recently.

He pulled into a loading area at the jail, got out of the van, and opened a side compartment, where rows of gleaming metal chains and cuffs dangled on hooks.

He grabbed four pairs of leg irons and four “belly chains,” which loop around the inmate’s stomach and attach to handcuffs. He bent down and pulled out a retracting stairway in front of each compartment so that he wouldn’t have to do it with the inmates standing next to him.

He stowed his gun in a locker, waited for a set of heavy, sliding doors to open, and walked into a large room inside the jail where a group of inmates was waiting.

“Everyone who has court today, line up,” Fangohr said.

One by one, three men in jumpsuits placed their hands against a wall as Fangohr patted them down, then looped the belly chain around them from behind. One by one, they knelt on a stool, facing away from Fangohr, as he slid cuffs over their ankles.

Fangohr called for a female officer to pat down a female inmate. Some of the men complained their leg restraints were too tight.

Fangohr led them out to the van and up the steps, loading the men into the rear compartment and the woman into the side compartment.

¢ Douglas County Jail information

“Careful, guys. Don’t slip,” he said.

The chains from their leg restraints rattled on the metal floor as they sat down.

In the brig

“I’m about a minute out,” Fangohr said into a radio as he neared the courthouse. “You want me to bring them up or you want me to wait in the brig?”

The “brig” is a holding cell deep within the courthouse where inmates wait for their court appearances. Like many of the places where Fangohr and his colleagues do their work, the room is unmarked and hidden from view.

While in the brig, inmates can choose from a stack of magazines or books — two popular titles are “Blaming the Victim” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” — or watch something tame on TV.

“You don’t want to let them watch Jerry Springer and get all fired up,” Fangohr said.

For the officers, there’s a refrigerator, a microwave and a cookie jar in the shape of a police officer’s head. When the jar opens, the officer says, “Stop! Move away from the cookie jar!”

On a board in another room, the officers keep a list of the inmates considered high-security — those charged with violent felonies, for example.

Though much of the officers’ work happens behind the scenes, they see a wider variety of public court proceedings than perhaps anyone else in the county.

They spend so much time listening to legal arguments that officer Dale Flory said sometimes he has to stop himself from yelling “Objection!”

Inmates sometimes don’t realize, when they first step into the White Rhino, that the officer picking them up also will be standing with them in court.

“A lot of them will lie to you about their charges … they don’t want to be looked down upon,” said Darcie Holthaus, the only female court-security officer. “I always tell them, you’re not my family, and you’re not my friends, and people all make mistakes.”

Unhappy ride back to jail

It was not a successful day in court for the female inmate who rode with Fangohr that day.

She had been convicted earlier of theft and obstruction, and she had violated her probation. She was there with her appointed attorney to make the case to Douglas County District Court Judge Jack Murphy that she deserved another chance on probation instead of being sent to jail.

These kinds of moments– when inmates rise in front of a judge to learn their fate — can be the most volatile. The officers pay particular attention to sentencings and jury verdicts involving high-profile inmates.

In general, officers said, people are in better spirits on their way to court than on their way back to jail.

“They might want to act tough for a little bit,” after leaving court if things don’t go their way, Fangohr said.

Judge Murphy disagreed that the woman deserved another chance, so he revoked her probation, which meant she would spend a year in jail.

Fangohr sat a few feet behind the inmate as she wiped away tears. He stayed behind as the newest court-security officer, Chris Thomas, took the woman back to the jail along with the three male inmates, who’d finished their court appearances.

Thomas led the woman outside into a secluded hallway. She placed her hands on the wall and cried as Thomas fastened her belly chain, which she’d been allowed to remove in court.

She cried throughout the elevator ride into the building’s basement, where the White Rhino was waiting. Thomas asked her if she was O.K.

“No,” she answered. She said she wasn’t like all the other inmates at the jail and said she was tired of looking at women.

Thomas, a former jail officer, tried to console her by saying that if she took part in the jail’s inmate work program, she’d be out in six months.

“Buckle it up for the bumpy ride, now,” Thomas said as she climbed into the van.