"Prank exposes Caribbean airports security, emergency response"

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Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Prank exposes security, emergency response
Cayman Islands - Cayman Net News
This Land Rover, parked in the long-term car park, eventually caused a major alert at Owen Roberts International Airport A security alert at Owen Roberts International Airport in Grand Cayman on Saturday exposed major flaws in airport security and the way emergency services on the Cayman Islands respond to terrorist threats. According to an official statement issued by the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, “At around 9:00 pm (on Saturday, 30 June) officers were alerted to a vehicle parked in the long stay car park at the airport that had been covered in caution tape.” However, Cayman Net News understands that members of the public had been trying to alert the emergency services to the presence of the vehicle since around 2:00 pm, meaning that seven hours elapsed between the initial reports and the police response. Aileen Samuel, from the Cayman Islands Road Safety Advisory Council (CIRSAC), contacted a Cayman Net News reporter just after 5:00 pm to complain that she had been trying to report the presence of a suspicious vehicle in the airport’s long-term car park for nearly three hours. According to Ms Samuel, the 911 Emergency Communication Centre had refused to accept the report as an emergency and direct calls to the police had produced the reaction that it was none of their business. At 6:30 pm the vehicle, a silver Land Rover Discovery wrapped in what is commonly referred to as ‘bomb tape’, the vehicle was clearly visible parked next to the road which goes to and from the arrivals area. Airport staff in the area were paying no attention to its presence. The alert was finally triggered when Ms Samuel made a direct call to a senior police officer on his personal cell phone. According to the police, an area cordon and roadblocks were immediately put in place around the airport as a safety precaution, while a thorough investigation was carried out to assess the vehicle. The airport was closed for around 45 minutes, while the investigations were completed. A 29-year-old man was taken to the police station. He told officers he had taped up the car to play a joke on a friend who is on vacation, and was released after receiving a severe warning about his actions. The police statement concludes, “In light of sensitivities surrounding means of transportation, and in particular airports, the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) is warning the public that actions such as this will be taken very seriously and all incidents of this nature will be dealt with robustly.” The prank is believed to have been prompted by a terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport, in Scotland. On the same day, at around 9:15 am Cayman Islands time, two men drove a Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane cylinders in the airport terminal. Initial media reports incorrectly described the vehicle as a Land Rover or Range Rover. Although the police statement reassured that the whole incident was, “a prank,” it has left members of the public concerned at the lack of security awareness at Owen Roberts Airport and also generated a number of complaints from members of the public about previous lapses in security. One regular visitor said they felt what they described as the, “so-called” security staff at Owen Roberts Airport were more interested in wheel-clamping vehicles and collecting fines than assessing any security threat an unattended vehicle might pose. “You could park a car bomb by the terminal and someone would come along with a wheel clamp to make sure no-one could move it away,” they commented. Other reports covered what were described as regular incidents where the airport perimeter fence has been breached or climbed and people, often staff members late for work, have crossed the runway. A London-based security expert, who was at the time reviewing reports of the incident in Glasgow, told Cayman Net News that a major international airport such as Owen Roberts needed to have far better security protocols in place to deal with incidents like this. “Although in this case it was a prank, albeit an ill-considered one, there are other far more sinister scenarios. One of them is the possibility that terrorists were using the stunt to assess the time it took to generate a full-scale security response,” he suggested. Drawing on extensive experience, their advice was that the incident should prompt the appropriate authorities to launch a full-scale review of airport security on Grand Cayman. “Next time it might not be a joke and the consequences of ignoring reports from concerned members of the public could be catastrophic,” they warned.