Officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, are considering extending the amount of time a person can be banned from county facilities for certain behaviors that result in what are known as Disruptive Behavior Orders, or DBOs.
Currently, the maximum amount of time someone can be barred from a facility under a DBO is 90 days. The proposed change could increase that ban to two years and could bar someone from more than one county facility location.
At Tuesday’s Montgomery County Council hearing, several residents expressed concern that could violate free speech rights, but county officials said the intent is to prevent incidents that rise to threats to safety of staff and patrons at county facilities.
Most of the incidents occur at Montgomery County’s libraries. According to county officials, 190 DBOs were issued in 2025, compared with 22 incidents in 2020.
WTOP contacted Patrick Fromm, assistant director for branch operations at Montgomery County Public Libraries, to ask what might be behind in the increase in DBOs.
He chalked some of it up to the disruption of social norms coming out of the pandemic.
“We just noticed a lot more behaviors that fell outside the behavioral guidelines that we establish for our locations, and you know, a little lack of adherence to some of the social norms and things that had been commonplace beforehand.”
Fromm said the library system does not want to bar people from accessing the libraries and the many services they provide.
“I have our guidelines for behavior posted in all of our locations and online. And so whenever we notice someone violating one of those, our staff takes like a three-step approach,” he said.
The first step is to let the person know that they are violating the guidelines, Fromm said.
In a case where someone is eating in an area of the library where that’s not allowed, or taking a call in a quiet area, a staff member will gently remind them of the rules, he said.
“If someone is eating or talking loudly on the phone and not following staff direction, we don’t treat that nearly as seriously as something that actually jeopardizes safety, really causes fear in other customers,” Fromm said.
If the staff considers issuing a DBO, Fromm said that it’s because “we’ve exhausted the other options available to us.”
There is an appeals process, according to Fromm.
Rayeesi Mahmood, the assistant branch supervisor at the Rockville Library, echoed Fromm, explaining the response from staff would escalate depending on behaviors that the staff see. For example, she said, if “someone is cursing at someone, or trying to destroy library property like a computer just because they are frustrated at something,” then that could generate a DBO.
But if some of the many teens that flock to the Rockville library are simply a little boisterous, that would simply result in staff asking them to comply with the posted guidelines.
“Most of the time, they are using it the way they should be,” she said.
Mahmood said behaviors that can trigger a DBO have ranged from cursing at staff, throwing objects or threatening staff or other patrons. And if the violations of behavior continue, Mahmood said, “Then that goes to the max 90-day DBO.”
Source
